Browse content similar to Frost on Nixon. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
In the summer of 1977, | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
a British television host with a reputation for acerbic wit, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
irreverent humour and searing interviews with society's villains | 0:00:32 | 0:00:37 | |
scooped the media across the globe with a series of programmes that rocked the political world | 0:00:37 | 0:00:42 | |
and had a ripple effect that went beyond its original expectations. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
David Frost's interviews with disgraced American President, | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
Richard Nixon, three years after he resigned, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
were landmarks in political broadcasting. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
Eventually eliciting from the tough, legally-savvy politician | 0:00:56 | 0:01:01 | |
a confession implicating himself in a major obstruction of justice. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
Of having, as he put it, let his friends down, | 0:01:06 | 0:01:09 | |
let the country down and let the American people down. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
The programmes garnered sheaves of awards, even won plaudits from the grudging American press. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:19 | |
In 2008, the one-to-one personality challenge between the two men, Frost and Nixon, | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
was to be the subject of, first, a West End play | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
and then a film starring Michael Sheen as Frost | 0:01:27 | 0:01:31 | |
and Frank Langella as Nixon. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
The film won five Oscar nominations, including one for Langella's performance. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:40 | |
I am here with Sir David Frost to find out the story behind the story. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:43 | |
But first, the background. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
1972 was American election year. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
Nixon had already served a first term and was campaigning vigorously for a second. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
Then, in June '72, a few months before election day, police arrested five men | 0:01:59 | 0:02:05 | |
breaking into the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building in Washington. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:11 | |
Their leader was James McCord, Security Director of Nixon's re-election campaign. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:17 | |
Those further up in the Republican Party denied all knowledge. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:21 | |
What I have said, that I have no prior knowledge of | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
and no involvement in the electronic bugging of the Watergate, | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
that's what I've said all along and it's still as true. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
But the suspicion grew that the Republican Party had been trying to bug the Democrats. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
But did Nixon himself know? | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
Was he even in collusion? | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
In the following months, two reporters from the Washington Post, | 0:02:41 | 0:02:46 | |
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered the fact that there was indeed a secret slush fund | 0:02:46 | 0:02:51 | |
to finance spying operations on the Democratic Party. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:56 | |
Nonetheless, Nixon went on to win the election by a landslide. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:00 | |
The next four years will be the time | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
that we will try to make ourselves worthy of this victory. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
He was a President with major achievements to his name. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
He had made a diplomatic breakthrough with his visit to China, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
an agreement on nuclear missile reduction with Russia, | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
and was close to ending American involvement in Vietnam. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
Yet the Watergate scandal did not go away. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
There was strong evidence of an attempt to block the investigation and obstruct justice. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:40 | |
Slowly, the complex network of intrigue was uncovered, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
finally implicating Richard Nixon himself. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
He resigned to avoid impeachment and retired in disgrace. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:51 | |
As President, I must put the interests of America first. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
effective at noon tomorrow. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
David Frost, what made you think you could scoop this story? | 0:04:06 | 0:04:09 | |
What gave you the idea you could pull it off? | 0:04:09 | 0:04:14 | |
I don't know. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:15 | |
I think it started with the fact that he was clearly the most interesting | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
and in some ways mysterious figure to interview in the world at that particular moment. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:26 | |
The uniqueness of having to leave office but the drama that went with it. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:32 | |
To unearth that story was just irresistible. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
And the fact that people said they thought it was impossible to do that made it even more irresistible. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:41 | |
I can imagine that! Because you had a soaring career at that time, | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
but you had really founded your career | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
in the comedy boom of the early '60s. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
You were seen as a humourist. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
You had been the entertainment at the White House one Christmas for President Nixon. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
So it's possible to imagine he thought you were a lightweight? | 0:04:57 | 0:05:01 | |
Well, it may have helped him say yes, perhaps if he did think that. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:06 | |
But the thing is, by the time I had done the Nixon interviews... | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
the film deliberately wanted to make me an underdog | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
and implied that I'd done a couple of interviews in Australia before I interviewed Nixon. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
But by the time I interviewed Nixon, | 0:05:16 | 0:05:18 | |
I had interviewed three or four thousand people by that time, | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
so it was a regular stint for me, in one sense, although this was the biggest one. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
Tell me about the moment when you picked up the phone and started the process. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:33 | |
I started the process, really, | 0:05:33 | 0:05:34 | |
with a number of calls to people other than Nixon. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
The key moment was when Clay Felker, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
who created New York Magazine, great friend, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
said to me, Swifty Lazar is in the Hamptons this weekend on his way into New York, | 0:05:42 | 0:05:47 | |
he's clearly been given an opportunity by Nixon now, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:51 | |
they had announced the book and so on, to do television. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
So the first real call was really to Swifty Lazar, the legendary agent. | 0:05:56 | 0:06:02 | |
It's a great name, Swifty Lazar! | 0:06:02 | 0:06:04 | |
And that was because I think he got Humphrey Bogart three films in an afternoon | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
or something like that, anyway. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
So you started asking around about what you would have to pay Nixon, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:16 | |
because this was going to be a done deal, wasn't it? | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
He wanted money. He needed money, didn't he? | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
The interesting thing about that is I think he was at that moment | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
very, very worried about money, | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
and I think the reason he was worried about money, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
apart from general diffidence, sometimes, on those things, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
but the main reason was, he wasn't sure that some of the 30 people or whatever | 0:06:34 | 0:06:39 | |
who had gone to jail, for short sentences but nevertheless gone to jail, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
for doing what he'd asked them to do, might sue him. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:46 | |
And I think, in addition to anything else, he was worried about that. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
As it turned out, nobody did sue him. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
None of his loyal aides who went to prison for him did ever sue him, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:58 | |
so his fears were not fulfilled, but that was his fear at the time. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
So you had to beat the networks at their own game, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
and the three networks were in play, weren't they? | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
They all wanted to get this interview, and you were coming from behind, as it were. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
The networks were in two minds because they were worried about paying for an interview and so on, | 0:07:12 | 0:07:17 | |
although, already, Lyndon Johnson had been paid for an interview | 0:07:17 | 0:07:22 | |
when he left office by CBS, | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
before this ever happened. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
Anyway, when it came through to the semi-finals, as it were, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
there was NBC and myself and NBC were offering at the end, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
I think, 400,000 for two hours, | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
and I was offering 600,000 for six hours. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:44 | |
So, hourly rate, I got a better deal. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
But on the other hand, the lesser amount of work would have been to take the NBC one. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
And the thing that everybody said, which was really interesting about this, | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
was that, in fact, the NBC draft, which I'd obviously never seen, | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
didn't stipulate, as we did, | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
that a certain number of hours must be devoted to Watergate. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:09 | |
The truth of the thing is, because he was quite illusive about sitting down to Watergate, even with us, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:14 | |
with whom he had to, because of the contract, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
that if anyone had signed him up and not got Watergate in black and white, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:21 | |
they would have a hell of a job of ever getting it. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
We'll come to the terms in a moment, | 0:08:24 | 0:08:26 | |
but let's just deal with the fact that NBC might have bid | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
and, indeed, they had the money. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:31 | |
You bid more and you didn't have the money? | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
David, one of the rules of media behaviour is that you don't go ahead | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
with a programme until you know where the money's coming from! | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
Well, that's the ideal, certainly, and that's normally what I would do. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
But in this particular case, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
I reckoned I could raise the money, and in the end I did. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:51 | |
But it was quite hairy for a time in the middle, | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
particularly when, early on, one of the promised backers withdrew. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:59 | |
So it was quite hairy doing the interviews | 0:08:59 | 0:09:03 | |
and then going off to the phone to get the rest of the money to continue with the interviews. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:08 | |
And that was a bit of drama that I contained with myself and a few close colleagues. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:13 | |
But it was quite tense. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
But how nail-biting was it? | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
I mean, you were busy doing these heavy interviews all day long, | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
and then heading off to try and raise money? | 0:09:22 | 0:09:24 | |
Well, I've always believed that you've got to be versatile | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
and that was a good example of being versatile, I guess. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:31 | |
29 hours of interviewing. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
Was that difficult to establish from the start? | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
And what made you think it would take 29 hours? | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
-Yes, I don't think... -It's longer than The Ring. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
I don't think anyone else has ever been interviewed for, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
more or less continuous, over four weeks. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:48 | |
I think, first of all, the daunting size of the agenda to be covered. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:54 | |
We were doing, basically, the Nixon presidency. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
We weren't doing the early years | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
of Nixon or the later years of Nixon, or whatever. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
It was such a dauntingly large subject | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
that I thought we needed 24 hours, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:07 | |
and we...got the 24 hours, after a bit of pressure. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:14 | |
But, basically, Swifty Lazar and Co were not really opposed to that. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
I mean, "Do we really need that? Wouldn't 16 be enough?" | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
But I said, "No, 24." | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
Now, when we actually got into the sessions, | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
Nixon was not filibustering, but he was sometimes taking longer | 0:10:28 | 0:10:33 | |
to come to the point than he might have done, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
so we were pleased with where we were getting to, | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
but we were going to run out of time, eventually. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
And so I made a date to go and have lunch | 0:10:41 | 0:10:46 | |
with Jack Brennan, his Chief of Staff - | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
delightful guy. I mean, it was a great team | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
Nixon had for those interviews. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
I mean, it was a team that, if they'd have been the closest to him | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
in the White House, he might not have got into all this trouble. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
But anyway, so I had lunch with Jack Brennan | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
and did a bit of a Nixon trick on him, | 0:11:04 | 0:11:08 | |
saying we needed four more hours, | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
but we didn't have any more money to go from 24 to 28. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
Jack, understandably, said, | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
"Oh, I don't know whether we could do that with no more money | 0:11:16 | 0:11:20 | |
"for an extra four hours. I mean..." | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
And I said, "Because you know the thing is that, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:24 | |
"if we can't get an extra four hours | 0:11:24 | 0:11:28 | |
"we'll have to drop two or three subjects... Like China." | 0:11:28 | 0:11:34 | |
BOTH CHUCKLE | 0:11:34 | 0:11:36 | |
And that was perfect, and Jack saw his way to saying yes. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:41 | |
29 hours of interviewing, David, is a marathon for the interviewer. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:46 | |
I mean, did you go into training, did you stay fit? Did you exercise? | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
I mean, how did you keep yourself on the ball? | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
Who was it who said that, of her husband, | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
"The only exercise he gets is jumping to conclusions." | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
I don't know, but maybe there's something of that in it. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:02 | |
But, basically, the thing was, it was on the very first day | 0:12:02 | 0:12:07 | |
it really was borne in on me that the first of, at that stage, | 0:12:07 | 0:12:12 | |
12 two-hour sessions, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
which became two and a half hours after this later conversation, | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
and I suddenly realised that, forget for a minute about the 24 hours, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:23 | |
I've never interviewed anyone continuously for TWO hours. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:28 | |
It's quite a long time for a continuous non-stop interview, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
and I thought, "I'm about to do this 12 times over." | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
I mean, that's when it really... it came home to me. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:39 | |
But then the first session went, among other things, very quickly | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
and one got into the pattern of doing two hours. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:47 | |
"Doesn't everyone do two hours?" Of course, they never do. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:50 | |
-It was like being an athlete? -Yes. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
-You had to stay fit, not over-eat, not indulge. -Oh, no. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
But you did go to parties and you did go to opening nights, | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
even while you were doing these interviews? | 0:12:58 | 0:13:01 | |
Yes, one was a premiere of a film I'd produced or co-produced, | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
'but, basically, one didn't go to very many social occasions | 0:13:04 | 0:13:09 | |
'in that period, from the last period | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
'when one's there preparing it and doing it. I had a birthday' | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
which I didn't suppress - | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
I had a birthday party and things like that - but, basically, it was, | 0:13:16 | 0:13:20 | |
I worked a damned sight harder than I ever did | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
for my degree at Cambridge. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
Now, what was the Nixon team like? | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
What sort of negotiations did you enter into with them | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
before you started? Were they very exact? | 0:13:31 | 0:13:33 | |
Well, we could do several hours on that, | 0:13:33 | 0:13:36 | |
because there was a period when they were trying to hold off | 0:13:36 | 0:13:39 | |
doing, first of all, because they didn't want to mess up or interfere | 0:13:39 | 0:13:44 | |
with Haldeman and Ehrlichman's upcoming trials, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
so they said, "We can't talk about Watergate until after that," | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
and, of course, anything related to Watergate. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
They started listing a lot more things that they couldn't talk about | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
until these trials were over and so on, and there was, in the end, | 0:13:56 | 0:14:00 | |
there had to be a crunch and one had to say, | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
"Well, look, you know, this is..." At one stage, Jack Brennan said, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
"If you can't agree with that delay for Watergate, or whatever, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
"the President would rather hand back the cheque | 0:14:09 | 0:14:13 | |
"and forget the whole thing." | 0:14:13 | 0:14:15 | |
And, you know, one had to say that, at that point, one was considerably | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
committed and, you know, that he would have to probably look forward | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
to a writ for about 20m, if he did that, you know, or more. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
Did you have to threaten that? | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
Yes, yes, I did, but not in a threatening voice. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:36 | |
-A charming voice. -Just in a legally-threatening voice. -Yes! | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
So it really came to the edge, that they were on the point | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
of withdrawing, because of the timing of the interviews? | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
This is a very complicated thing, because there was the question | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
of whether the interviews were going to effect the actual trials | 0:14:49 | 0:14:55 | |
of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
and so that, while one's sympathetic with that to a certain extent, | 0:14:57 | 0:15:02 | |
at the same time, we had these deadlines we had to meet and so on, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
and that they knew about and had signed on for and so on, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
so it would have been an outrageous breach of contract. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:13 | |
And it didn't happen and, as ever happened with all in the period | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
leading up to it with Richard Nixon, I said to one of his aides once, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:22 | |
"Why is it that Richard Nixon, when he finally agrees to something, | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
"has opposed it in such outright terms and so on, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
"that he doesn't get the gratitude for agreeing at the end, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:34 | |
"because you've had such a struggle to get there, you know, | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
"and he's being a fool to himself, as it were", and so on. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
"Well, that's the way he does things," they said. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
-And Nixon had said at the start, "no holds barred", hadn't he? -Yes. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:47 | |
-He had actually said that to you? -Yes, yes. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:49 | |
So you knew that it was combat to the death? | 0:15:49 | 0:15:51 | |
Well, yes, it was going to be. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
Parts of it were certainly going... Obviously, the interesting thing | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
about the interviews is there's the conflict about Watergate, | 0:15:57 | 0:16:00 | |
and conflict about other subjects, the Houston Plan and so on, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
but, of course, there were also, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:05 | |
in the 28 and three quarter hours, or whatever, there were also | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
sessions on China, where instead of being an interrogator, | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
one became, almost, Nixon's Boswell, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
you know, Boswell to his Johnson, really, because the full story | 0:16:15 | 0:16:20 | |
of what happened in China was obviously not of adversary material. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:25 | |
It was something we all wanted to know about and most people | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
applauded as a good move, anyway, you know. So it was important to, | 0:16:28 | 0:16:33 | |
as it always is with interviews, to get the right tone, | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
and the tone on Watergate was different to the tone on China, for instance. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:41 | |
Do you regret that the Watergate part of the story | 0:16:41 | 0:16:45 | |
scooped the headlines and has made it famous, | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
and the interesting developments over China, which you gave | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
an excellent exposition of, have rather fallen by the wayside? | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
Yes, I think that was probably predictable, | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
in the sense that Watergate was the unsolved mystery | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
of who was the villain. People thought they knew, | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
but didn't know for sure, so I think that was always | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
going to be more dramatic and there were things... | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
One of the most memorable things in the interviews, about where I said, | 0:17:12 | 0:17:17 | |
"So you mean that if the President really feels | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
"it's an important enough issue, then he can do something illegal | 0:17:20 | 0:17:26 | |
"if national interest dictates?" | 0:17:26 | 0:17:29 | |
And Nixon said, "Well, if the President does it | 0:17:29 | 0:17:33 | |
"that means it's not illegal." | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
And, as he said those words - | 0:17:35 | 0:17:37 | |
in a session before the Watergate session, | 0:17:37 | 0:17:39 | |
not the Watergate session, | 0:17:39 | 0:17:40 | |
about the Houston plan and so on - as he said those words, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
I mean, I just thought, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:45 | |
"Those words are going to resound from these interviews almost as much | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
"as the Watergate material." And, of course, that's true. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
That quote has been played back so many times. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:58 | |
It was something that really particularly enraged | 0:17:58 | 0:18:03 | |
one's American friends, you know, who feel very strongly | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
about their constitution and it not being | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
invaded by a president and so on, and so that was just one exchange. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:15 | |
It wasn't as lengthy as Watergate, but it did have a tremendous impact. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
Did you, when he made that remark, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
which, as you rightly say, has become legendary, | 0:18:22 | 0:18:25 | |
did you notice a flicker on his face - | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
that he recognised that this was a hostage to fortune, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
he'll never be able to retract that sentence? | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
I don't think so, I mean, that's a very interesting one. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
I did get the impression... | 0:18:39 | 0:18:40 | |
the thing I thought when he said it was, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:42 | |
that I must say something to try and get him to carry on - | 0:18:42 | 0:18:47 | |
"This is gold, this is pure gold, even if he says nothing more. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
"But if I can get him to talk about it..." | 0:18:51 | 0:18:53 | |
One, you try and look unsurprised by this remark, you know. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:59 | |
You don't go, "Yes! You've said it!" So that you look unconcerned. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:06 | |
And I said something like, "..as a matter of course." | 0:19:06 | 0:19:11 | |
And he said, "Exactly." So you were just trying to, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
were trying to continue the golden trail a little bit longer. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:18 | |
Let's talk about your behaviour, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:19 | |
because this is where it gets really interesting, and when we see | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
the interviews played, it will be interesting to watch his expressions, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
his body language and, indeed, yours, because this is gladiatorial stuff. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
You weren't so much an interviewer as a prosecutor, David. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:35 | |
On Watergate, definitely, and, in fact, he himself in the interview | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
says something to the effect about my being the prosecutor, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:44 | |
and "You're doing it very well", and all of that. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
And him being the defence and so on, so that was clearly prosecution | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
and defence, or at least, the first of the two days on Watergate was. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
The second day, it's not right to say father-confessor, | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
-but I was there to push him and push him. -Well, we'll get round to that. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
Well, you certainly do that, but let's consider, | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
I mean, he has had a career as a lawyer and he's not called | 0:20:03 | 0:20:08 | |
Tricky Dicky for nothing. I mean, he was a very, very astute lawyer. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
Did you come to recognise how brilliant a mind he had? | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
Yes, I think he did. It was very... And he'd been very smart | 0:20:16 | 0:20:22 | |
and he'd been taking no prisoners with various people in politics. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
-Well, your approach was to do an enormous amount of research. -Yes. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
Very extensive research, over months, I think. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
Yes, over a year, yeah. 12 months, yeah. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
And, in fact, pieces of paper everywhere, ink everywhere, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
-Caroline Cushing, your girlfriend... -Including on my fingers, usually. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
-She said you always had inky fingers everywhere. -That's absolutely true. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:47 | |
Yes. Still do. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
Still can't manage how you deal with a Pentel pen without getting it on. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:55 | |
Right, inky fingers and lots of research into the law. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
We're going to look at a clip where Nixon tries to wrongfoot you | 0:20:58 | 0:21:03 | |
with his legal background and actually makes a fool of himself. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:08 | |
Now this is something that you had researched, | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
it's the statute on corruption, and just... You tell the story about | 0:21:11 | 0:21:16 | |
how you'd just researched it before you departed | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
to do the interview that day. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
Well, it was. I raised it in the car, on the way down, | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
we all went down in the same car, and just said, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:28 | |
"Let's just go over that law and its implications again, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:33 | |
"let's just go through it." | 0:21:33 | 0:21:35 | |
And Bob and John and everyone, we went through it, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
so it just so happened, magically, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
that we'd discussed it just before the interview, on the very same day. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:46 | |
That very hour or so before the interview, you had spelled out | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
-what that statue was? -Yes. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
-And here is Nixon trying to wrongfoot you. -Oh, right. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
You used the term "obstruction of justice". | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
You perhaps have not read the statute, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
-with regard to...obstruction of justice. -No, I have. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:07 | |
Obstruction... Well, oh, I'm sorry, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:09 | |
of course, you probably have read it, but possibly you might have | 0:22:09 | 0:22:14 | |
missed it, because when I read it, many years ago, | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
er, perhaps when I was studying law, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
although the statute didn't even exist then, because it is | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
'a relatively new statute, as you know.' | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
But in any event, when I read it in recent times, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
I was not familiar with all of the implications of it. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
The statute doesn't require just an act, the statute has | 0:22:35 | 0:22:42 | |
the specific provision, "..one must corruptly | 0:22:42 | 0:22:47 | |
-"impede a judicial manner". -Well, a corrupt endeavour is enough. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:54 | |
A... All right. A conduct endeavour. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:59 | |
A corrupt endeavour, it was, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:01 | |
and you got the phrase right and he got it wrong. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
I know. That was odd, wasn't it? Because that was a very legal thing | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
and he was so... I mean, and correcting himself | 0:23:07 | 0:23:12 | |
and trying to be gracious and, "Of course, you've probably read it", | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
and all of that, it was a... Yes, | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
in terms of when that's played, as it sometimes is, to an audience, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:22 | |
I mean, it is as hilarious a clip, in terms of the response | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
-it gets, as anything. -Because it turned the argument against himself? | 0:23:25 | 0:23:30 | |
Yes. Absolutely. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:31 | |
Now, in this encounter, he's obviously playing | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
a legal game, too. What sort of tactics did he employ | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
and how soon did you recognise what he was doing? | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
Well, one thing that one feared, as a possibility, of course, | 0:23:41 | 0:23:46 | |
would be that he would filibust through and take an eternity | 0:23:46 | 0:23:50 | |
to answer simple questions and so on, | 0:23:50 | 0:23:52 | |
and he never did that, really. What he only did sometimes was | 0:23:52 | 0:23:56 | |
he would sometimes, instead of people answering the question | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
and then maybe going off in another direction towards the end, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
he would often start at the other end and come round, | 0:24:04 | 0:24:09 | |
but all the while meaning to, and coming around to | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
answering the question at the end. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:14 | |
It was his way of doing things, sometimes. Oddly enough, | 0:24:14 | 0:24:18 | |
if you watch the first two lines of it, you would think | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
he was getting away and off the subject, and it was only | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
if you watch the whole answer, you see it came round at the end. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:29 | |
But he would answer the questions in the end, | 0:24:29 | 0:24:34 | |
and he wouldn't filibuster, but sometimes he did start | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
away from the point and come to the point. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:39 | |
If it had been a filibuster, | 0:24:39 | 0:24:41 | |
he would never have got to the point at all, at the end. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
Your researchers began to be anxious that he was putting up | 0:24:44 | 0:24:49 | |
quite a good case, and that, in fact, there was just | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
a tiny risk that Nixon himself would come out of this well and would be | 0:24:51 | 0:24:57 | |
reinstated in popular reputation. Did you ever have that sense? | 0:24:57 | 0:25:02 | |
No, I didn't. About halfway through the interviews, | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
there was this question about whether we were being tough enough | 0:25:06 | 0:25:12 | |
on one or two subjects and, oddly enough, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
the discussion actually took place | 0:25:14 | 0:25:16 | |
two or three days after the famous quote we were just talking about | 0:25:16 | 0:25:21 | |
from the Houston Plan - "..and if the President does it | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
"that means it's not illegal", that quote. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:27 | |
So, no, I didn't share it, but I shared a concern, obviously, | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
that we were going to score in the end, as it were, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
over the whole scene and, obviously, in terms of emphasising | 0:25:35 | 0:25:41 | |
the underdog thing - and it's a bit dramatic, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:46 | |
the film rather goes over the top about the fact of their worries | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
after two or three sessions and so on - but, I mean, no, | 0:25:49 | 0:25:53 | |
I never thought we would fail, but despite talking about raising money | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
earlier, I mean, whatever money one had, one wouldn't necessarily | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
have put it all on the fact that we were going to prevail, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:04 | |
-but I thought we would. -In your book, you talk about | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
having that encounter, when you said to your team, | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
-"Look, anyone who thinks we're going to fail had better leave now." -Yes. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
-And there was... -Pause. -..a pause. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:16 | |
-And nobody left! -But it must have... -Tense, as a moment. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
Quite a tense moment. It's bad enough dealing with Nixon, | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
-than to have your own team feeling that you're being too soft. -Yes. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
What did you make of the allegation that you were too soft? | 0:26:26 | 0:26:30 | |
Well, I think it's the sort of thing that one's often felt over the years | 0:26:30 | 0:26:38 | |
since then, or occasionally felt it, in the sense that, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:42 | |
you mustn't confuse the style of voice with the intellectual content, | 0:26:42 | 0:26:48 | |
and that, whether it was Neil Kinnock or other famous interviews | 0:26:48 | 0:26:53 | |
with Margaret Thatcher and other people, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
that I mean it's the content, the intellectual content, that matters, | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
and it's often better to keep it conversational, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
rather than becoming hostile and aggressive, | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
because that can shut people up. Particularly, I guess, | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
if it's someone you've got to talk to for another 16 hours, you know. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
So I wasn't worried about... | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
Of course, that was a point to be concerned about in terms of - | 0:27:13 | 0:27:18 | |
and to be relieved it hadn't happened at the end and so on - | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
but, basically, I always, somehow or other, | 0:27:22 | 0:27:28 | |
I thought we were going to get there. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:30 | |
But it's always been your technique to go in slowly, hasn't it, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
and gently, and always being very polite, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:35 | |
but, nonetheless, with the killer punch coming? | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
That's the ideal. Yes, absolutely. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
The words that John Smith, the former Labour leader, | 0:27:41 | 0:27:44 | |
in his last interview with us on Breakfast With Frost, said, | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
"You have a way of asking beguiling questions | 0:27:48 | 0:27:52 | |
"with potentially lethal consequences." | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
And I said, "Well, on balance, I'd be happy | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
-"to have that on my tombstone." -29 hours of them. -Yes! | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
There came a point at which, according to your book | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
and, indeed, in the film - I don't know whether it's true or not - | 0:28:03 | 0:28:07 | |
John Birt took you aside and said, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:10 | |
"You've got to start dominating the conversation now. You've got to move | 0:28:10 | 0:28:15 | |
"into a different style - physically dominate the interview." | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
-Yes. -David, tell me how you physically dominate an interview? | 0:28:19 | 0:28:23 | |
I don't know exactly how one does it, but one knows afterwards | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
that one's done it. But he was absolutely right. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
He'd seen it when we'd been doing the series together in England, | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
it had happened on occasions, and he felt that, as you say, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
that, in fact, that you've got to take control of the conversation, | 0:28:37 | 0:28:42 | |
and part of that is a physical thing, | 0:28:42 | 0:28:44 | |
and it's obviously not as obvious as that, quite, | 0:28:44 | 0:28:52 | |
because that would be... But there's time for the person to be warned | 0:28:52 | 0:28:56 | |
as you make the journey across the room. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
So it's not that, but it is a form of control, | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
in terms of a slightly more aggressive style of voice. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
It's because so much, as you know, as an expert, | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
that interviewing, or so much of interviewing, is instinct, | 0:29:11 | 0:29:15 | |
and so a lot of that thing of taking physical control of the interview, | 0:29:15 | 0:29:18 | |
is instinct, you know. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:20 | |
Like with silences, for instance, in interviews, | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
that you've got to have the instinct. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:25 | |
There's a pause, a pregnant pause and, it's an instinct, | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
you've got to know either that the person, if you shut up, | 0:29:28 | 0:29:32 | |
will go much further, or that he's blind forgotten every word | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
he was about to say, and you'd better leap in | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
as fast as possible. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:39 | |
So it's instinct. So it's instinct with the physical control thing. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:43 | |
But I know what he means, and sometimes, | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
I can sometimes see an interview set up where the chairs | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
are just too far apart, | 0:29:50 | 0:29:52 | |
that you could never gain physical control of the interview. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:57 | |
But presumably Nixon's a huge man, isn't he? | 0:29:57 | 0:29:59 | |
A very broad, large man, and you're less broad and large, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:04 | |
-so it was quite a challenge? -Thank you! -But graceful. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
We've got an example of your doing that, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:11 | |
and I wonder if you, perhaps when you've seen it, | 0:30:11 | 0:30:13 | |
you'll tell us exactly how you went into action | 0:30:13 | 0:30:16 | |
-to make that effective. Here it is. -Oh, right. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:20 | |
'Six times I said,' | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
"You can't provide clemency." It's wrong, for sure. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:24 | |
I've never said though that you did provide clemency, | 0:30:24 | 0:30:28 | |
-nor was I talking about the long term. -But my point is, without... | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
Let me quote to you then. I've been through the record, | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
I want to be totally fair | 0:30:35 | 0:30:37 | |
and let me read to you the last quote on the transcripts | 0:30:37 | 0:30:39 | |
that I can find about this matter. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
You said, "Why didn't I go to the last one?" | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
I read 16 and I thought that was enough, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
but we could have read many more, no doubt. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:49 | |
But the last thing in the transcripts | 0:30:49 | 0:30:52 | |
I can find about this subject was you talking on April 20th | 0:30:52 | 0:30:58 | |
and you were recollecting this meeting and you said that you said | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
to Dean, and to Haldeman, "Christ, turn over any cash we got." | 0:31:03 | 0:31:08 | |
That's YOUR recollection of the meeting, on April 20th, | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
when you didn't know you were on television. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
-Look at all those gestures! -Yes! I'm surprised. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
Do you remember feeling, "I've got to really shout him down?" | 0:31:17 | 0:31:21 | |
No, I did, in the middle there, yes. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
No, I wasn't consciously doing that, but I absolutely did | 0:31:24 | 0:31:26 | |
do that there, and yes, that was... | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
I think that the hand gesture was more me... | 0:31:30 | 0:31:34 | |
.doing the gesture for myself, really, rather than for Nixon. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
I mean, a hand here was not going to be particularly fearsome. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
I mean because it would never get... | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
Even if you've got a greater reach than Muhammad Ali. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:51 | |
I think that was just getting | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
a wee bit passionate myself | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
rather than probably trying to do that to Nixon. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:01 | |
But that was a good example of the cut and thrust | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
that there was often in the interviews. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
But there was, and indeed he remained enormously in control of himself, didn't he? | 0:32:06 | 0:32:12 | |
He did occasionally get rather thoughtful, not surprisingly, | 0:32:12 | 0:32:16 | |
but he was a very controlled man. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:18 | |
Did you feel you ever got through to Nixon the human being? | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
Oddly enough it was at the end, | 0:32:22 | 0:32:23 | |
when we were leaving California, and so I went to take my leave | 0:32:23 | 0:32:30 | |
of Nixon to say thank you and so on, at Sacramento, | 0:32:30 | 0:32:36 | |
and Nixon said, "Hello, David". | 0:32:36 | 0:32:41 | |
Well, that was a first shock, because that was the first time in | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
the whole 28 and 3/4 hours that he'd used my Christian name. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:52 | |
-He'd always called you Mr Frost? -Yes, Mr Frost. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
So that was a surprise, but it was a cue for an incredible, | 0:32:55 | 0:33:02 | |
probably 20 minutes, when Nixon was, and this is a word | 0:33:02 | 0:33:07 | |
that I've never seen anyone use about him, | 0:33:07 | 0:33:10 | |
but he was on this occasion, carefree. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
Nixon carefree, yes, Nixon carefree, for about 20 minutes, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:16 | |
and he welcomed us in and then he said to Caroline, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:22 | |
"Let me show you around," | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
and took her along and around up to a room, and he said, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:28 | |
"Brezhnev used to sleep there. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:32 | |
"Great swordsman, of course, Brezhnev, and so on, | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
"but the Russians are, you know!" "Dostoevsky!" | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
And so around the place in that sense, and then came back into the main room | 0:33:39 | 0:33:45 | |
and said to his beloved, well, I suppose, Batman would be as good a word, | 0:33:45 | 0:33:49 | |
"Manolo, get out the caviar that Charles sent us for Christmas." | 0:33:49 | 0:33:55 | |
And interestingly he was still sending caviar, | 0:33:55 | 0:34:00 | |
and he was soon to leave office, of course, himself as well. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
Anyway, he said, "Before you go, give us your impression | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
"of Henry Kissinger," so he did a hilarious impression of Henry Kissinger | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
and then he went off to get the caviar. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:14 | |
And it was just for about 20 minutes, Nixon as carefree, | 0:34:14 | 0:34:19 | |
and then after about 20 minutes, just because he was always affable, | 0:34:19 | 0:34:25 | |
he was not rude to people just as a point of nothing, | 0:34:25 | 0:34:29 | |
but these sort of transparent walls | 0:34:29 | 0:34:35 | |
went across and once more | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
he was still affable, but no longer intimate. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
And that was an extraordinary glimpse of a Nixon | 0:34:43 | 0:34:48 | |
that you rarely saw. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:50 | |
Well, we get a glimpse of another Nixon, and probably | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
the true Nixon too, towards the end of the Watergate interviews | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
when you elicit from him what you had been hoping to hear all along. | 0:34:57 | 0:35:02 | |
Yes. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:03 | |
He speaks in the course of the interviews of being a Quaker, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
and you yourself come from a Methodist background, | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
your father was a Methodist minister, | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
and I feel there's a great quality of the religious confession | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
about this. We're going to see an extract of how you went about it, | 0:35:15 | 0:35:20 | |
but I wonder whether you felt that you had reached | 0:35:20 | 0:35:23 | |
a confessional point? | 0:35:23 | 0:35:24 | |
Yes, perhaps confessional isn't right... | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
but when you... Very much... | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
We're talking morals here, aren't we? | 0:35:32 | 0:35:34 | |
Yes, and in terms of... | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
There was a real sense of... | 0:35:37 | 0:35:40 | |
not of religious faith, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:44 | |
but religious sensibility in this, yes, and I think that he was... | 0:35:44 | 0:35:50 | |
he wasn't... | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
Although he was certainly not a Catholic, but I mean that, | 0:35:52 | 0:35:56 | |
a sense of confession towards the end. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:59 | |
-And relieving himself of his guilt, to some extent? -Yes. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:04 | |
I don't want to push the religious element too strongly, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
but I think we can see that you have brought from him | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
the confession he thought he'd never make. Here it is. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
'I would like to hear you say,' | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
I think the American people would like to hear you say, one is... | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
There was probably more | 0:36:24 | 0:36:27 | |
than mistakes, | 0:36:27 | 0:36:30 | |
there was wrongdoing, whether it was a crime or not, yes, | 0:36:30 | 0:36:35 | |
it may have been a crime too. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:38 | |
Secondly, | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
I did... | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
And I'm saying this without questioning the motives, right? | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
I did abuse the power I had as president, | 0:36:48 | 0:36:51 | |
or not fulfilled the totality of the oath of office, | 0:36:51 | 0:36:56 | |
that's the second thing. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
And thirdly, | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
I put the American people through two years of needless agony | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
and I apologise for that. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
And I say that, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
you've explained your motives, I think those are the categories. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:14 | |
And I know how difficult it is for anyone, and most of all you, | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
but I think that people need to hear it, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:21 | |
and I think unless you say it, | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:29 | |
-Well, his face says it all, David. -Yes. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:33 | |
Just watching that again, | 0:37:33 | 0:37:34 | |
and that sort of slight anguish throwing his head back, | 0:37:34 | 0:37:38 | |
and then of course the fact was that | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
I was waiting for him to respond, | 0:37:42 | 0:37:44 | |
and his first response was to say, as you know, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
was to say, "Well, what word would you express?" | 0:37:46 | 0:37:51 | |
And that was really the most sort of | 0:37:51 | 0:37:55 | |
silence-grabbing moment that one experienced, | 0:37:55 | 0:37:58 | |
because suddenly one had, in a sense, | 0:37:58 | 0:38:02 | |
to formulate three points for him and so on. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:07 | |
And at the same time formulate them | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
in such a way that one avoided getting into words like crime | 0:38:10 | 0:38:15 | |
but using wrongdoing, and using these words | 0:38:15 | 0:38:20 | |
so as one kept with the kernel of what we were trying to say. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:24 | |
So after 29 hours, or something like, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
you got to this point, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
did you recognise the significance of it at the time? | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
Yes, I think one started to feel it in the last 20 minutes | 0:38:32 | 0:38:36 | |
as he addressed all of those three points that we just saw. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:40 | |
And, um...and yes, I think one was coming to that realisation | 0:38:40 | 0:38:46 | |
that this was really...keep... | 0:38:46 | 0:38:49 | |
or during that period, to keep it going, | 0:38:49 | 0:38:52 | |
to keep it moving on because there was more he had to say, one hoped. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:57 | |
And he did have more to say, so yes, | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
one did start to feel it towards the end, and afterwards there was... | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
It had been an extraordinary two and a half hour session or whatever, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
and everybody there, really, our colleagues, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:18 | |
but his colleagues too, were knocked out by what they'd seen. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:23 | |
Did you ever feel any pity for him? | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
Well, it was very difficult to feel that for him at that time, | 0:39:28 | 0:39:32 | |
because the 30, or whatever it was, people who worked for him | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
who'd gone to jail because of what they did for him, | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
you know, and that made it sort of... The sympathy was split, | 0:39:38 | 0:39:44 | |
obviously, at the very least in that sense. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:47 | |
So 30 years later, that dialogue would be different | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
with nobody in jail and nobody had suffered for it, | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
but at the time it was very... | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
So one was able to feel a certain empathy | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
for this man who had so wanted to be great | 0:40:01 | 0:40:06 | |
and hadn't been, and so on. A certain empathy, | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
but not really a sympathy because of the people | 0:40:10 | 0:40:14 | |
who were casualties of his policies. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:19 | |
-And they make a film of it, they make a play about it. -Yes. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
And then they make a film of it. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:24 | |
You go to see the play, the audience falls silent as you enter | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
-the auditorium, and then they made a film. -That's right. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
Which garners huge, huge awards and nominations and so on. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
What did you feel about the telling of the story | 0:40:34 | 0:40:38 | |
and the way that it was shown? | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
Were you conscious that Michael Sheen was at all like you? | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
Not particularly. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:48 | |
I remember after the thing, when the play had been announced, | 0:40:48 | 0:40:53 | |
and going to Broadway and then the film had been announced. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:57 | |
Michael Sheen was on my Al Jazeera programme and he said | 0:40:57 | 0:41:02 | |
"Yes, do you realise I'm going to be playing David Frost | 0:41:02 | 0:41:09 | |
"for the next 12 months," and I said "That's a coincidence, so am I!" | 0:41:09 | 0:41:14 | |
But he was a delight to get to know, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
and I thought they did a great job with the film. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:19 | |
-Can we just clear up one or two delicate matters of... -Why not! | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
Fictional licence. You did not pick up Caroline Cushing on the flight over to America. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:28 | |
No, no, it was in Monte Carlo that we first met, | 0:41:28 | 0:41:33 | |
but I guess at that time, when they were doing the play in London | 0:41:33 | 0:41:38 | |
with a limited budget, it was a bit easier to have two airline seats | 0:41:38 | 0:41:42 | |
than have a Monte Carlo ball at the sporting club in Monte Carlo. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:48 | |
Also, did Nixon remark on your shoes? | 0:41:48 | 0:41:50 | |
Yes, he did, strangely enough. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
We were talking on the way there, talking about this problem | 0:41:54 | 0:41:59 | |
about Nixon for the... He believes you shouldn't do anything other than small talk | 0:41:59 | 0:42:05 | |
for the first five minutes and then get down to the business, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
and so we were going down there and thinking what would be | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
the subject that would come up before the five minutes were up. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
And on this particular occasion, I just happened to say, | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
"Well, he'll probably ask about something non-interesting like my shoes, | 0:42:20 | 0:42:26 | |
I mean and somebody said, "Yeah, probably," | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
This was absolutely unlikely that a president, or a former president, | 0:42:29 | 0:42:33 | |
would make a comment about someone's shoes, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:35 | |
and we sat down before the interview and the first thing Nixon said was, | 0:42:35 | 0:42:41 | |
"Where did you get those shoes?" | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
And I said, "They're Italian." "Oh, really?" | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
David, to be serious, finally, was it the toughest job you ever did? | 0:42:46 | 0:42:50 | |
It was tough in terms of living up to the story that | 0:42:53 | 0:42:59 | |
one had to try and get out of this. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
The high point of your career? | 0:43:01 | 0:43:03 | |
Difficult to think of one that's more so, I think. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:06 | |
I can think of... | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
No, in that sense it... | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
There's still no-one else who's ever talked to anyone for 28 hours! | 0:43:12 | 0:43:17 | |
So in that sense, there are people I've done | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
an hour's interview with that has been absolutely memorable | 0:43:20 | 0:43:25 | |
and so on, but not 28 and 3/4 hours obviously, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:27 | |
and not with quite such a historical climax to come to. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:33 | |
-But this is... -So one can certainly say that this was the most... | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
the toughest 28 and 3/4 hours I ever did with anybody. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:40 | |
It's also a tribute to your great variety of skills as an interviewer, | 0:43:40 | 0:43:45 | |
not least in your capacity to stay silent for the appropriate moment, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
and this is the climactic moment when you stay silent. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
'I just can't stand seeing somebody else cry,' | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
and that ended it for me... | 0:44:00 | 0:44:02 | |
..and I just, well, I must say, I sort of cracked up, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:08 | |
started to cry, | 0:44:08 | 0:44:10 | |
pushed my chair back, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
and then I blurted it out... | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
And I said, "I'm sorry... | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
"I just hope I haven't let you down." | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
Well, when I said, "I just hope I haven't let you down," | 0:44:25 | 0:44:29 | |
'that said it all, I had.' | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
I let down my friends... | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
I let down... | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
..the country. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:41 | |
What did that moment feel like? | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
Extraordinary, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
and one was not numb, but not numb at all, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:55 | |
but the impact of it was, well, as you mentioned just now, | 0:44:57 | 0:45:01 | |
it was very easy to stay silent when listening to that. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:07 | |
David Frost, thank you. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:09 | |
Thank you. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:10 | |
It was on the night of June 17th 1972 | 0:45:37 | 0:45:41 | |
that five men were arrested breaking into | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington, DC. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
It turned out later that the break-in had involved such key Nixon supporters | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
as Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
and had been planned by the President's own re-election committee | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
headed by former Attorney General John Mitchell | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
and his assistant Jeb Magruder. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
Bob Haldeman, the President's Chief of Staff, | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
was with Mr Nixon in Florida when the break-in occurred. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
They returned to the White House on June 19th | 0:46:09 | 0:46:12 | |
and they met on a number of occasions during the next few days. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:16 | |
Two meetings are regarded as key. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:20 | |
The first occurred on the morning of June 20th and included a discussion of Watergate. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:25 | |
A White House tape of that discussion | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
was later found to have been erased, the famous 18.5 minute gap. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
The President met again with Haldeman on June 23. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
In that conversation, Mr Nixon is told that the FBI | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
is moving into problem areas in its Watergate probe. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:46 | |
Haldeman suggests, and Nixon agrees, that the CIA be instructed | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
to ask the FBI not to proceed any further with its investigation of the burglary. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:55 | |
Mr President, to try and review your account of Watergate | 0:46:56 | 0:47:01 | |
in one programme is a daunting task, | 0:47:01 | 0:47:04 | |
but we'll press, first of all, through the sort of factual record | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
and the sequence of events | 0:47:08 | 0:47:09 | |
as concisely as we can to begin with. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
Um... But just one brief preliminary question... | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
Reviewing now your conduct over the whole of the Watergate period, | 0:47:18 | 0:47:23 | |
with the additional perspective now, three years out of office and so on, | 0:47:23 | 0:47:28 | |
do you feel that you ever obstructed justice | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
or were part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice? | 0:47:31 | 0:47:35 | |
Well, in answer to that question, | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
I think that the best procedure would be for us to do | 0:47:38 | 0:47:42 | |
exactly what you're going to do in this programme, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:45 | |
to go through the whole record in which I will say what I did, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:52 | |
what my motives were, | 0:47:52 | 0:47:55 | |
and then I will give you my evaluation | 0:47:55 | 0:48:01 | |
as to whether those actions... | 0:48:01 | 0:48:05 | |
or anything I said, for that matter, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
amounted to what you have called an obstruction of justice. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:15 | |
I will express an opinion on it, | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
but I think what we should do is to go over it, the whole matter, | 0:48:17 | 0:48:22 | |
so that our viewers will have an opportunity | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
to know what we are talking about, | 0:48:25 | 0:48:27 | |
so that in effect they, as they listen, | 0:48:27 | 0:48:33 | |
will be able to hear the facts and make up their own minds. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:37 | |
I'll express my own opinion, they may have a different opinion, | 0:48:37 | 0:48:41 | |
YOU may have a different opinion. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:43 | |
But that is really the best way to do it, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
rather than to preclude it in advance and maybe prejudice their viewpoint. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
I am very happy to do that, because I think the only way, really, to examine all these events | 0:48:49 | 0:48:55 | |
is on a blow-by-blow account of what occurred. | 0:48:55 | 0:49:00 | |
So, beginning with June 20 then, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:04 | |
what did Haldeman tell you during the 18.5 minute gap? | 0:49:04 | 0:49:10 | |
Haldeman's notes are the only recollection | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
I have of what he told me. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:17 | |
Haldeman was a very good note-taker, | 0:49:17 | 0:49:20 | |
because, of course, we've had other opportunities to look at his notes, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
and he... He was making the notes for my presidential files. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
The notes indicated... | 0:49:27 | 0:49:28 | |
PR offensive and blah, blah, blah. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
That's right. Well, of course. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:32 | |
-Diversion. -Well, you've asked me what it was, | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
my recollection was that the notes... Check the EOB | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
to see whether or not it's bugged. Obviously, I was concerned about | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
whether or not the other side was bugging us. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
I went on to say, let's get a public relations offensive | 0:49:46 | 0:49:50 | |
on what the other side is doing in this area and so forth, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:55 | |
and, in effect, don't allow... | 0:49:55 | 0:49:59 | |
the...democratic opposition... | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
build this up into...basically, blow it up into a big, political issue, | 0:50:04 | 0:50:11 | |
those were the concerns expressed. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:13 | |
And I have no recollection of the conversation except that. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:17 | |
But as far as your general state of knowledge, that evening, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:22 | |
when you were talking with Chuck Colson on the evening of June 20th, | 0:50:22 | 0:50:29 | |
it suggests that from somewhere, | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
your knowledge has gone much further. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:34 | |
You say, "If we didn't know better, | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
"we'd have thought the whole thing had been deliberately botched". | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
Colson tells you, "Bob is pulling it all together, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:45 | |
"thus far, I think we've done the right things to date", | 0:50:45 | 0:50:51 | |
and he says, "Basically, they're all pretty hard line guys", | 0:50:51 | 0:50:57 | |
and you say, "You mean Hunt?" | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
And you say, "Of course, we're just going to leave this where it is with the Cubans, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:04 | |
"at times I just stonewall it". And you also say, | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
"We've got to have lawyers smart enough to have our people delay." | 0:51:08 | 0:51:13 | |
Now, somewhere, you were pretty well informed by that conversation on June 20th. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:19 | |
As far as my information on June 20th is concerned, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
I had been informed with regard to... | 0:51:22 | 0:51:29 | |
the possibility of Hunt's involvement, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
whether I knew on the 20th or the 21st or 22nd, I knew... | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
I learned in that period about the possibility of Liddy's involvement. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:42 | |
Of course I knew about the Cubans and McCord, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
who were all picked up at the scene of the crime. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
Now, you have read, here, excerpts out of a conversation with Colson, | 0:51:48 | 0:51:54 | |
and let me say, as far as what my motive was concerned - | 0:51:54 | 0:51:58 | |
and that's the important thing - | 0:51:58 | 0:52:00 | |
my motive was in everything I was saying, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
or certainly thinking at the time, | 0:52:04 | 0:52:08 | |
was not to try to cover up... | 0:52:08 | 0:52:15 | |
a criminal action, | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
but to be sure... | 0:52:17 | 0:52:21 | |
that as far as any... | 0:52:21 | 0:52:26 | |
slipover, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:27 | |
or should I say "slopover", I think would be a better word, | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
any slopover in a way that would damage innocent people | 0:52:31 | 0:52:37 | |
or blow it into political proportions, | 0:52:37 | 0:52:40 | |
it was that that I certainly wanted to avoid. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:43 | |
So you invented the CIA thing on the 23rd as a cover? | 0:52:43 | 0:52:47 | |
No, now, let's use the word "cover-up", though, | 0:52:47 | 0:52:53 | |
in the sense that it should be used and should not be used. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
If a cover-up is for the purpose of covering up criminal activities, | 0:53:00 | 0:53:05 | |
it is illegal. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:07 | |
If, however, a cover-up, as you have called it, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
is for a motive that is not criminal, | 0:53:11 | 0:53:17 | |
that is something else again. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
And my motive was not criminal. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
I didn't believe that we were covering any criminal activities. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
I didn't believe that John Mitchell was involved. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
I didn't believe that, for that matter, anybody else was. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:35 | |
I was trying to contain it politically, | 0:53:35 | 0:53:38 | |
and that's a very different motive | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
from the motive of attempting to cover up | 0:53:41 | 0:53:46 | |
criminal activities of an individual. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
And so there was no cover-up of any criminal activities, | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
that was not my motive. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:54 | |
But surely in all you've just said, | 0:53:54 | 0:53:56 | |
you have proved exactly that that was the case, | 0:53:56 | 0:53:59 | |
that there was a cover-up of criminal activity. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
Because you've already said, and the record shows, | 0:54:02 | 0:54:05 | |
that you knew that Hunt and Liddy were involved. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
You'd been told that Hunt and Liddy were involved. | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
At the moment when you told the CIA to tell the FBI to stop, period, as you put it, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:18 | |
at that point only five people had been arrested, | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
Liddy was not even under suspicion. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:24 | |
And so you knew in terms of intent, | 0:54:24 | 0:54:26 | |
and you knew in terms of foreseeable consequence, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:29 | |
that the result would be that in fact, criminals would be protected. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:34 | |
Hunt and Liddy, who were criminally liable, would be protected. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:38 | |
You knew about them. The whole statement says that we were going... | 0:54:38 | 0:54:43 | |
Haldeman says, "We don't want you to go any further on it, | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
"get them to stop, they don't need to pursue it, they've already got their case." | 0:54:46 | 0:54:50 | |
Walters notes that he said, "Five suspects had been arrested, this should be sufficient." | 0:54:50 | 0:54:55 | |
You said, "Tell them don't go any further into this case, period." | 0:54:55 | 0:54:59 | |
By definition, by what you've said and by what the record shows, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
that per se was a conspiracy to obstruct justice | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
because you were limiting it to five people when, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
even if we grant the point that you weren't sure about Mitchell, | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
you already knew about Hunt and Liddy and had talked about both. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
-So, that is obstruction of justice. -No, just a moment... -Period. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
That's your conclusion. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
-It is. -But now let's look at the facts. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:24 | |
The facts is that as far as Liddy was concerned, | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
what I knew was only... | 0:55:28 | 0:55:33 | |
the fact that he was the man on the committee, | 0:55:33 | 0:55:38 | |
who was in charge of intelligence operations. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
As far as Hunt was concerned, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
and if you read that tape, you will find | 0:55:44 | 0:55:48 | |
I told them to tell the FBI - | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
they didn't know apparently - and the CIA, that Hunt was involved. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:58 | |
And so there wasn't any attempt to keep them from knowing | 0:55:58 | 0:56:04 | |
that Hunt was involved. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:05 | |
The other important point to bear in mind | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
when you ask what happened and so forth | 0:56:08 | 0:56:10 | |
is that what happened two weeks later. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
Two weeks later, when I was here in San Clemente, | 0:56:12 | 0:56:18 | |
I called Pat Grey, the then FBI director, | 0:56:18 | 0:56:22 | |
on the phone to congratulate the FBI | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
on a very successful operation they had in apprehending some hijackers | 0:56:25 | 0:56:30 | |
in San Francisco or some place abroad. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:32 | |
He then brought up the subject of the Watergate investigation. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:37 | |
He said that there are some people around you | 0:56:37 | 0:56:42 | |
who are mortally wounding you, | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
or might mortally wound you, | 0:56:45 | 0:56:46 | |
because they're trying to restrict this investigation. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:49 | |
And I said, "Well, have you talked to Walters about this matter?" | 0:56:49 | 0:56:53 | |
And I said, "Yes." I said, "Does he agree?" | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, Pat..." | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
I had known him very well, of course, from over the years, | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
I did call him by his first name. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
I said, "Pat, you go right ahead with your investigation." | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
He has so testified, and he did go ahead with the investigation. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:15 | |
Yes, but the point is that obstruction of justice | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
is obstruction of justice if it's for a minute or five minutes, | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
much less for the period June 23rd to July 5th, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
when I think was when he talked to Walters and decided to go ahead, | 0:57:24 | 0:57:27 | |
the day before he spoke to you on July 6th. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:29 | |
It's obstruction of justice for however long a period, isn't it? | 0:57:29 | 0:57:34 | |
And also, it's no defence to say that the plan failed, | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
that the CIA didn't go along with it, | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
refused to go along with it, said it was transparent. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
I mean, if I try and rob a bank and fail, that's no defence. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
I still tried to rob a bank. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:48 | |
I would say you still tried to obstruct justice and succeeded for that period. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
-He's testified. -Now, that's... -They didn't interview Agario, didn't do all of this. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:56 | |
And so I would have said it was a successful attempt | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
to obstruct justice for that brief period. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:01 | |
Now, just a moment. You're again making the case, | 0:58:01 | 0:58:04 | |
which, of course, is your responsibility | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
as the attorney for the prosecution. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:09 | |
Let me make the case as it should be made, | 0:58:09 | 0:58:12 | |
even if I were not the one who was involved, for the defence. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:17 | |
The case for the defence here is this. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:20 | |
You use the term obstruction of justice. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:23 | |
You perhaps have not read the statute with regard to... | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
respect, er, er... obstruction of justice. | 0:58:26 | 0:58:30 | |
-Well, I have. -Obstruction... Oh, I'm sorry, | 0:58:30 | 0:58:33 | |
of course you probably have read it, | 0:58:33 | 0:58:35 | |
but possibly you might have missed it, | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
because when I read it many years ago in... | 0:58:38 | 0:58:42 | |
..perhaps when I was studying law, | 0:58:44 | 0:58:46 | |
although the statute didn't even exist then | 0:58:46 | 0:58:48 | |
because it's a relatively new statute, as you know. | 0:58:48 | 0:58:51 | |
Er...but in any event, when I read it even in recent times, | 0:58:51 | 0:58:55 | |
I was not familiar with all of the implications of it. | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
The statute doesn't require just an act, | 0:58:59 | 0:59:03 | |
the statute has the specific provision, | 0:59:03 | 0:59:08 | |
one must corruptly... | 0:59:08 | 0:59:11 | |
..impede a judicial... | 0:59:13 | 0:59:16 | |
Well, a corrupt endeavour is enough. | 0:59:16 | 0:59:19 | |
A corr... All right, must...conduct an endeavour. | 0:59:19 | 0:59:23 | |
Corrupt intent, but it must be corrupt, | 0:59:23 | 0:59:27 | |
and that gets to the point of motive. | 0:59:27 | 0:59:30 | |
One must have a corrupt motive. | 0:59:30 | 0:59:33 | |
Now, I did not have a corrupt motive. | 0:59:33 | 0:59:36 | |
-You were... -My motive was pure political containment, | 0:59:36 | 0:59:40 | |
and political containment is not a corrupt motive. | 0:59:40 | 0:59:43 | |
-But... -If so, for example, President Truman would have been impeached. | 0:59:43 | 0:59:46 | |
Yeah, but the point is that... | 0:59:46 | 0:59:48 | |
Motive can be helpful when intent is not clear. | 0:59:48 | 0:59:51 | |
Your intent is absolutely clear, it's stated again, | 0:59:51 | 0:59:54 | |
stop this investigation here, period. | 0:59:54 | 0:59:57 | |
The foreseeable, inevitable consequence if you'd been successful | 0:59:57 | 1:00:01 | |
would have been that Hunt and Liddy would not have been brought to justice. | 1:00:01 | 1:00:05 | |
How can that not be a conspiracy to obstruct justice? | 1:00:05 | 1:00:10 | |
No, wait a minute, stop the... | 1:00:10 | 1:00:12 | |
You would have protected Hunt and Liddy from guilt. | 1:00:12 | 1:00:14 | |
Stop the investigation. Er... | 1:00:14 | 1:00:18 | |
You still have to get back to the point that I have made previously, | 1:00:18 | 1:00:24 | |
that my concern there, which was conveyed to them, | 1:00:24 | 1:00:30 | |
and the decision then was in their hands, | 1:00:30 | 1:00:33 | |
my concern was having the investigation | 1:00:33 | 1:00:36 | |
spread further than it needed to. | 1:00:36 | 1:00:39 | |
-Well, spread... -And as far as that was concerned | 1:00:39 | 1:00:42 | |
I don't believe... | 1:00:42 | 1:00:45 | |
As I said, we turned over the fact that we knew that Hunt was involved, | 1:00:45 | 1:00:49 | |
the possibility that Liddy was involved, | 1:00:49 | 1:00:53 | |
but under the circumstances... | 1:00:53 | 1:00:55 | |
-You didn't turn that over. -What? -You didn't turn that over. | 1:00:55 | 1:00:58 | |
-No, no, we turned over the fact that Hunt... -You never told anyone about Liddy. | 1:00:58 | 1:01:01 | |
No, not at that point. | 1:01:01 | 1:01:03 | |
Now, after the Gray... after the Gray conversation, | 1:01:03 | 1:01:09 | |
the cover-up went on. | 1:01:09 | 1:01:12 | |
You would say, I think, that you were not aware of it. | 1:01:12 | 1:01:16 | |
I, I think, was arguing that you were a part of it | 1:01:16 | 1:01:19 | |
as a result of the June 23rd conversations, | 1:01:19 | 1:01:22 | |
but you would say that you were... | 1:01:22 | 1:01:24 | |
I was a part of it as a result of the June 23rd conversations? | 1:01:24 | 1:01:28 | |
-Yes. -After July 6th when I talked to Gray? | 1:01:28 | 1:01:31 | |
I would have said that you joined a conspiracy which you therefore never left. | 1:01:31 | 1:01:35 | |
No. Well, then, we totally disagree on that. | 1:01:35 | 1:01:37 | |
But I mean, those are the two positions. | 1:01:37 | 1:01:40 | |
Now, you, in fact, however, would say | 1:01:40 | 1:01:42 | |
that you first learned of the cover-up on March 21st. | 1:01:42 | 1:01:47 | |
Is that right? | 1:01:47 | 1:01:48 | |
On March 21st was the date when I was first informed | 1:01:51 | 1:01:55 | |
of the fact, the important fact to me in that conversation, | 1:01:55 | 1:02:01 | |
was of the blackmail threat that was being made by Howard Hunt | 1:02:01 | 1:02:06 | |
who was one of the Watergate participants, | 1:02:06 | 1:02:10 | |
but not about Watergate. | 1:02:10 | 1:02:13 | |
So, during the period between those two dates, | 1:02:13 | 1:02:18 | |
between the end of June, beginning of July and March 21st, | 1:02:18 | 1:02:23 | |
while lots of elements of the cover-up as we now know were continuing, | 1:02:23 | 1:02:28 | |
were you ever made aware of any of them? | 1:02:28 | 1:02:32 | |
No, I don't know what you're referring to. | 1:02:32 | 1:02:35 | |
Well, for instance, your personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, | 1:02:35 | 1:02:40 | |
coming to Washington to start the raising of 219,000 of hush money, | 1:02:40 | 1:02:47 | |
approved by Haldeman and Ehrlichman, | 1:02:47 | 1:02:49 | |
they went ahead without clearing it with you? | 1:02:49 | 1:02:52 | |
That was one of the statements that I've made, | 1:02:52 | 1:02:55 | |
which after all the checking we can possibly do, | 1:02:55 | 1:03:00 | |
and we checked with Haldeman, we checked with Ehrlichman... | 1:03:00 | 1:03:04 | |
I wondered, for example, if I had been informed, | 1:03:04 | 1:03:06 | |
if I had been informed that money was being raised | 1:03:06 | 1:03:09 | |
for humanitarian purposes to help these people with their defence, | 1:03:09 | 1:03:12 | |
I would certainly have approved it. | 1:03:12 | 1:03:14 | |
If I had been told that the purpose of the money was to raise it | 1:03:14 | 1:03:17 | |
for the purpose of keeping them quiet, | 1:03:17 | 1:03:19 | |
-I would have been disapproving. -But... | 1:03:19 | 1:03:21 | |
The truth of the matter is that I was not told. | 1:03:21 | 1:03:27 | |
I did not learn of it until the March period. | 1:03:27 | 1:03:29 | |
But in that case, if that was the first occasion, | 1:03:29 | 1:03:33 | |
why did you say in, um... such strong terms | 1:03:33 | 1:03:39 | |
to Colson on February 14th, | 1:03:39 | 1:03:43 | |
which is more than a month before, | 1:03:43 | 1:03:46 | |
you said to him, "The cover-up is the main ingredients. | 1:03:46 | 1:03:49 | |
"That's where we've got to cut our losses, my losses are to be cut, | 1:03:49 | 1:03:53 | |
"the President's loss has got to be cut on the cover-up deal. | 1:03:53 | 1:03:57 | |
-Why did I say that? -February 14th. | 1:03:59 | 1:04:02 | |
Because I read the American papers. | 1:04:02 | 1:04:04 | |
And in January, the stories that came up, | 1:04:04 | 1:04:08 | |
not just from The Washington Post, | 1:04:08 | 1:04:11 | |
the famous series by some unnamed correspondents | 1:04:11 | 1:04:16 | |
who have written a best-selling book since then. | 1:04:16 | 1:04:19 | |
But The New York Times, the networks and so forth | 1:04:19 | 1:04:23 | |
were talking about hush money. | 1:04:23 | 1:04:25 | |
They were talking about clemency for cover-up and all the rest. | 1:04:25 | 1:04:31 | |
It was that that I was referring to at that point. | 1:04:31 | 1:04:34 | |
I was referring to the fact that there was a lot of talk about cover-up, | 1:04:34 | 1:04:38 | |
and that this must be avoided at all cost. | 1:04:38 | 1:04:41 | |
But there's one very clear self-contained quote, | 1:04:41 | 1:04:46 | |
and I read the whole of this conversation of February 13th | 1:04:46 | 1:04:49 | |
which I don't think has ever been published. | 1:04:49 | 1:04:52 | |
And there was one very clear quote in it that I thought was... | 1:04:52 | 1:04:56 | |
It hasn't been published, you say? | 1:04:56 | 1:04:57 | |
I think it's available to anybody who consults the records, but... | 1:04:57 | 1:05:01 | |
-Oh, I see. -But people don't consult all the records necessarily. | 1:05:01 | 1:05:04 | |
-I just wondered if we'd seen it. -Well, I'm sure you have, yes. | 1:05:04 | 1:05:08 | |
Where the President says this on February 13th. | 1:05:08 | 1:05:12 | |
"When I'm speaking about..." This is to Colson. | 1:05:12 | 1:05:16 | |
"When I'm speaking about Watergate, | 1:05:16 | 1:05:19 | |
"though that's the whole point of the election, | 1:05:19 | 1:05:22 | |
"this tremendous investigation rests... | 1:05:22 | 1:05:26 | |
"unless one of the seven begins to talk. | 1:05:26 | 1:05:31 | |
"That's the problem." | 1:05:31 | 1:05:33 | |
Now, in that remark, it seems to me | 1:05:33 | 1:05:36 | |
that someone running the cover-up | 1:05:36 | 1:05:38 | |
couldn't have expressed it more clearly than that, could they? | 1:05:38 | 1:05:41 | |
What do we mean by, "One of the seven beginning to talk"? | 1:05:43 | 1:05:47 | |
How many times do I have to tell you | 1:05:47 | 1:05:49 | |
that as far as these seven were concerned, | 1:05:49 | 1:05:52 | |
the concern...that we had, | 1:05:52 | 1:05:58 | |
certainly that I had, | 1:05:58 | 1:06:00 | |
was that men who worked in this kind of covert activity, | 1:06:00 | 1:06:08 | |
men who, of course, realise it's a dangerous activity to work in, | 1:06:08 | 1:06:14 | |
particularly since it involves illegal entry, | 1:06:14 | 1:06:17 | |
that once they're apprehended, they are likely to say anything. | 1:06:17 | 1:06:23 | |
And the question was, I didn't know of anybody at that point, | 1:06:23 | 1:06:28 | |
nobody on the White House staff, | 1:06:28 | 1:06:30 | |
not John Mitchell, anybody else, | 1:06:30 | 1:06:32 | |
that I believed was involved, criminally. | 1:06:32 | 1:06:40 | |
But on the other hand, | 1:06:40 | 1:06:43 | |
I certainly could believe that a man like Howard Hunt, | 1:06:43 | 1:06:47 | |
who was a prolific book writer, | 1:06:47 | 1:06:50 | |
or any one of the others, under the pressures of the moment, | 1:06:50 | 1:06:54 | |
could have started blowing | 1:06:54 | 1:06:57 | |
and putting out all sorts of stories to embarrass the administration. | 1:06:57 | 1:07:02 | |
And as it later turned out, in Hunt's case, | 1:07:02 | 1:07:05 | |
to blackmail the President to provide clemency, | 1:07:05 | 1:07:09 | |
or to provide money, or both. | 1:07:09 | 1:07:12 | |
I still just think, though, that one has to, uh... | 1:07:13 | 1:07:18 | |
go contrary to the normal usage of language | 1:07:18 | 1:07:22 | |
of almost 10,000 gangster movies, | 1:07:22 | 1:07:27 | |
to interpret, "This tremendous investigation rests | 1:07:27 | 1:07:32 | |
"unless one of the seven begins to talk, | 1:07:32 | 1:07:35 | |
"that's the problem," | 1:07:35 | 1:07:37 | |
as anything other than some sort of conspiracy | 1:07:37 | 1:07:40 | |
to stop him talking about something damaging to the person speaking. | 1:07:40 | 1:07:43 | |
Well, you can state your conclusion and I've stated my view. | 1:07:43 | 1:07:47 | |
-That's true. -So, now we go on with the rest of it. | 1:07:47 | 1:07:49 | |
What President Nixon knew of the cover-up before March 21st | 1:07:49 | 1:07:54 | |
is disputed, but there is no dispute that on March 21st | 1:07:54 | 1:07:58 | |
John Dean did lay out | 1:07:58 | 1:08:00 | |
many of the key elements of the cover-up for the President. | 1:08:00 | 1:08:03 | |
Dean recited the history of the break-in | 1:08:03 | 1:08:05 | |
and listed the criminal liability of top presidential aides | 1:08:05 | 1:08:09 | |
like Haldeman and Ehrlichman and Dean himself | 1:08:09 | 1:08:12 | |
for actions which followed the burglary. | 1:08:12 | 1:08:15 | |
Dean told the President that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been paid | 1:08:15 | 1:08:19 | |
to keep the Watergate burglars silent through their January trial. | 1:08:19 | 1:08:23 | |
He said further that with sentencing only two days away, | 1:08:23 | 1:08:27 | |
Howard Hunt was now demanding a payment of 120,000 | 1:08:27 | 1:08:32 | |
for continued silence, | 1:08:32 | 1:08:33 | |
and Dean suggested that the price tag for blackmail | 1:08:33 | 1:08:36 | |
could total 1 million. | 1:08:36 | 1:08:39 | |
The period following the meeting on March 21st up to April 30th, | 1:08:39 | 1:08:44 | |
when Haldeman and Ehrlichman, resigned is crucial. | 1:08:44 | 1:08:48 | |
The President would later claim that he'd worked to get the truth out during this period. | 1:08:48 | 1:08:53 | |
His critics would claim that he continued to cover it up. | 1:08:53 | 1:08:57 | |
Looking back on the record now | 1:08:57 | 1:08:59 | |
of that conversation, as I'm sure you've done, | 1:08:59 | 1:09:03 | |
in addition to the overall details which we'll come to in a minute, | 1:09:03 | 1:09:07 | |
bearing in mind that a payment probably was set in motion | 1:09:07 | 1:09:11 | |
prior to the meeting and was certainly not completed | 1:09:11 | 1:09:15 | |
until late the evening of the meeting, | 1:09:15 | 1:09:18 | |
um...wouldn't you say that the record of the meeting | 1:09:18 | 1:09:22 | |
does show that you endorsed or ratified what was going on | 1:09:22 | 1:09:27 | |
with regard to the payment to Hunt? | 1:09:27 | 1:09:30 | |
No, the record doesn't show that at all. | 1:09:31 | 1:09:34 | |
In fact, the record, actually, is ambiguous, er... | 1:09:34 | 1:09:39 | |
..until you get to the end, and then it's quite clear. | 1:09:42 | 1:09:45 | |
And what I said...later in the day, | 1:09:45 | 1:09:50 | |
and what I said the following day, | 1:09:50 | 1:09:53 | |
shows what the facts really are | 1:09:53 | 1:09:59 | |
and completely contradicts the fact...the point that has been made. | 1:09:59 | 1:10:04 | |
And again, here's a case where Mr Jaworski in his book | 1:10:04 | 1:10:07 | |
conveniently overlooks what actually was done, | 1:10:07 | 1:10:11 | |
and what I did say the following day, as well as... | 1:10:11 | 1:10:16 | |
..other aspects of it. | 1:10:18 | 1:10:21 | |
Let me say I did consider the payment of 120,000 | 1:10:21 | 1:10:25 | |
to Hunt's lawyer and to Hunt, | 1:10:25 | 1:10:29 | |
for his attorney's fees and for support. | 1:10:29 | 1:10:33 | |
I considered it not because Hunt was going to blow, | 1:10:33 | 1:10:38 | |
using our gangster language here, on Watergate. | 1:10:38 | 1:10:43 | |
But, because as the record clearly shows Dean says, | 1:10:43 | 1:10:46 | |
it isn't about Watergate but it's going to talk about | 1:10:46 | 1:10:50 | |
some of the things he's done for Ehrlichman. | 1:10:50 | 1:10:53 | |
As far as the payment of the money was concerned, | 1:10:53 | 1:10:56 | |
when the total record is read, | 1:10:56 | 1:11:00 | |
you will find that it seems to end on a basis which is indecisive, | 1:11:00 | 1:11:07 | |
but I clearly remember, and you undoubtedly have it in your notes, | 1:11:07 | 1:11:12 | |
my saying that the White House can't do it, I think was my last words, | 1:11:12 | 1:11:18 | |
-because I had gone through the whole scenario with the... -But... | 1:11:18 | 1:11:23 | |
I laid it out, I said, "Look, what would it co... | 1:11:23 | 1:11:26 | |
"I mean, when you're talking about all of these people, | 1:11:26 | 1:11:29 | |
"what would it cost to take care of it for..." | 1:11:29 | 1:11:31 | |
-Well, no, I mean, I... -They talked about a million dollars, | 1:11:31 | 1:11:35 | |
and I said, "You could raise the money, | 1:11:35 | 1:11:37 | |
"but doesn't it finally get down to a question of clemency?" | 1:11:37 | 1:11:42 | |
And he said, "Yes." I said, "Well, you can't provide clemency, | 1:11:42 | 1:11:48 | |
"and that would be wrong, for sure." | 1:11:48 | 1:11:50 | |
Now, if clemency is the bottom line, | 1:11:50 | 1:11:53 | |
then providing the money isn't going to make any sense. | 1:11:53 | 1:11:56 | |
But when we talk about the money, | 1:11:56 | 1:11:58 | |
the 120,000 demand that in fact he got 75,000 of that evening, | 1:11:58 | 1:12:03 | |
bearing in mind what you were saying earlier about reading that, | 1:12:03 | 1:12:09 | |
the overall context to the conversation, | 1:12:09 | 1:12:11 | |
is there any doubt when one reads, | 1:12:11 | 1:12:16 | |
reading the whole conversation... | 1:12:16 | 1:12:19 | |
One, you could get a million dollars and you could get it in cash, I know where it could be gotten. | 1:12:19 | 1:12:24 | |
Two, your major guy to keep under control is Hunt. | 1:12:24 | 1:12:28 | |
Three, don't you have to handle Hunt's financial situation? | 1:12:28 | 1:12:32 | |
Four, let me put it frankly, | 1:12:32 | 1:12:34 | |
I wonder if that doesn't have to be continued. | 1:12:34 | 1:12:37 | |
Five, get the million bucks, it would seem to me that would be worthwhile. | 1:12:37 | 1:12:41 | |
Six, don't you agree that you'd better get the Hunt thing? | 1:12:41 | 1:12:44 | |
Seven, that's worth it and that's buying time on. | 1:12:44 | 1:12:48 | |
Eight, we should buy the time on that, as I pointed out to John. | 1:12:48 | 1:12:52 | |
Nine, Hunt has at least got to know this before he's sentenced. | 1:12:52 | 1:12:55 | |
Ten, first you've got the Hunt problem, that ought to be handled. | 1:12:55 | 1:12:59 | |
11, the money can be provided, Mitchell could provide the way to deliver it, see what I mean? | 1:12:59 | 1:13:04 | |
12, but let's come back to the money, | 1:13:04 | 1:13:07 | |
they were off on something else here, bored to death with the continual references to money. | 1:13:07 | 1:13:12 | |
A million dollars and so forth and so on, | 1:13:12 | 1:13:14 | |
let me say that I think you could get that in cash. | 1:13:14 | 1:13:16 | |
13, that's why your immediate thing, | 1:13:16 | 1:13:18 | |
you've got no choice with Hunt but the 120 or whatever it is, right? | 1:13:18 | 1:13:22 | |
14, would you agree that this is a buy time thing? | 1:13:22 | 1:13:25 | |
You'd better damned well get that done but fast. | 1:13:25 | 1:13:28 | |
15, who's going to talk to him? Colson? | 1:13:28 | 1:13:30 | |
16, we have no choice, and so on. | 1:13:30 | 1:13:33 | |
-Now, reading as you've requested the thing... -Yes, all right, fine. | 1:13:33 | 1:13:36 | |
Let me just stop you right there. Right there. | 1:13:36 | 1:13:39 | |
You're doing something here which I am not doing, | 1:13:39 | 1:13:41 | |
and I will not do throughout these broadcasts. | 1:13:41 | 1:13:44 | |
You have every right to. You are reading there out of context, | 1:13:44 | 1:13:48 | |
out of order, because I have read this | 1:13:48 | 1:13:52 | |
-and I know it better than you do. -I'm sure. | 1:13:52 | 1:13:54 | |
I should know it better because I was there. | 1:13:54 | 1:13:57 | |
It's no reflection on you, you know it better than anybody else I know, | 1:13:57 | 1:14:00 | |
and you're doing it very well. | 1:14:00 | 1:14:03 | |
But I am not going to sit here and read the thing back to you. | 1:14:03 | 1:14:06 | |
I could have notes here. As you know, I participated | 1:14:06 | 1:14:08 | |
on all of these broadcasts without a note in front of me. | 1:14:08 | 1:14:12 | |
I've done it all from recollection. I may have made some mistakes. | 1:14:12 | 1:14:15 | |
You certainly have seen it and I agree, but it's your life we're talking about. | 1:14:15 | 1:14:19 | |
In this instance, the very last thing you read, | 1:14:19 | 1:14:23 | |
do you ever have any choice with Hunt? | 1:14:23 | 1:14:26 | |
Why didn't you read the next sentence? | 1:14:28 | 1:14:30 | |
-Why did you leave it off? -Carry it on. | 1:14:30 | 1:14:32 | |
No, no, the reason... The next sentence says, | 1:14:32 | 1:14:36 | |
because I remember that so well, | 1:14:36 | 1:14:39 | |
but you never have a choice with Hunt. | 1:14:39 | 1:14:42 | |
Do you ever have one rhetorically? | 1:14:42 | 1:14:45 | |
You never have a choice with Hunt, | 1:14:45 | 1:14:47 | |
because when you finally come down to it, it gets down to clemency. | 1:14:47 | 1:14:52 | |
Now, why, after all of that horror story, and it was... | 1:14:53 | 1:14:58 | |
I mean, even considering that must horrify people. | 1:14:58 | 1:15:01 | |
Why would you consider paying money to somebody | 1:15:01 | 1:15:03 | |
who's blackmailing the White House? | 1:15:03 | 1:15:05 | |
I've tried to give you my reasons. | 1:15:05 | 1:15:07 | |
I was concerned about what he would do. | 1:15:07 | 1:15:09 | |
But my point is, after that, why not? | 1:15:09 | 1:15:12 | |
Why not you do what was not done by Mr Jaworski in his book, | 1:15:12 | 1:15:18 | |
what was not done by Mr Jaworski | 1:15:18 | 1:15:20 | |
before the Senate Judiciary Committee? | 1:15:20 | 1:15:22 | |
Read the last sentence, the last sentence which says, | 1:15:22 | 1:15:26 | |
"After that, you never have any choice with Hunt," | 1:15:26 | 1:15:29 | |
because it finally comes down to clemency, | 1:15:29 | 1:15:32 | |
and I said six times in that conversation. | 1:15:32 | 1:15:35 | |
You didn't read that in your ten things. | 1:15:35 | 1:15:37 | |
Six times I said, "You can't provide clemency. It's wrong, for sure." | 1:15:37 | 1:15:42 | |
I never said there that you did provide clemency. | 1:15:42 | 1:15:45 | |
-Nor was I talking about the long-term... -But my point is...my point is... | 1:15:45 | 1:15:49 | |
-Let me quote... -My point is... | 1:15:49 | 1:15:50 | |
Let me quote to you... I've been through the record, I want to be totally fair, | 1:15:50 | 1:15:54 | |
and let me read to you the last quote on the transcripts | 1:15:54 | 1:15:58 | |
that I can find about this matter, then. | 1:15:58 | 1:16:00 | |
-You said, "Why didn't I go?" to the last one? -Sure. | 1:16:00 | 1:16:02 | |
I read 16 and I thought that was enough, | 1:16:02 | 1:16:05 | |
but we could have read many more, no doubt. | 1:16:05 | 1:16:07 | |
But the last thing in the transcripts | 1:16:07 | 1:16:10 | |
I can find about this subject was you talking on April 20th, | 1:16:10 | 1:16:16 | |
and you were recollecting this meeting | 1:16:16 | 1:16:18 | |
and you said that you said to Dean and to Haldeman, | 1:16:18 | 1:16:22 | |
"Christ, turn over any cash we got." | 1:16:22 | 1:16:25 | |
That's YOUR recollection of the meeting, | 1:16:25 | 1:16:28 | |
on April 20th, when you didn't know you were on television. | 1:16:28 | 1:16:31 | |
Of course I didn't know I was on television. | 1:16:31 | 1:16:34 | |
On April 20th, it could well have been my recollection. | 1:16:34 | 1:16:37 | |
But my point is... | 1:16:37 | 1:16:39 | |
..I wonder why, again, | 1:16:41 | 1:16:44 | |
we haven't followed up with what happened after the meeting. | 1:16:44 | 1:16:47 | |
Let me tell you what happened after the meeting. | 1:16:47 | 1:16:51 | |
And you are, incidentally, very fair to point out, | 1:16:51 | 1:16:54 | |
and the record clearly shows, | 1:16:54 | 1:16:57 | |
that Dean did not follow up in any way on this. | 1:16:57 | 1:17:01 | |
The payment that was made - | 1:17:02 | 1:17:04 | |
Dean didn't know it, I didn't know it, nobody else knew it - | 1:17:04 | 1:17:07 | |
apparently was being made contemporaneously that day | 1:17:07 | 1:17:10 | |
through another source. | 1:17:10 | 1:17:12 | |
But the next morning, Mitchell told Haldeman that it had been paid, | 1:17:12 | 1:17:16 | |
and in a later transcript, you agree with Haldeman that he told you. | 1:17:16 | 1:17:20 | |
You say, "Yes, you reported that to me." | 1:17:20 | 1:17:23 | |
Yes. I understand. | 1:17:23 | 1:17:24 | |
-Let me point... -You were very soon aware it had gone through. | 1:17:24 | 1:17:27 | |
That's right, but my point is, | 1:17:27 | 1:17:30 | |
the question we have is whether or not the payment was made... | 1:17:30 | 1:17:35 | |
..as a result of a direction given by the President for that purpose. | 1:17:36 | 1:17:39 | |
And the point is, it was not, | 1:17:41 | 1:17:43 | |
and the point is that the next morning | 1:17:43 | 1:17:46 | |
you talk about the conversation, and here again... | 1:17:46 | 1:17:49 | |
You probably don't have it on your notes here, | 1:17:49 | 1:17:52 | |
but on the 22nd, I raised the whole question of payments | 1:17:52 | 1:17:57 | |
and I said... And I'm compressing it all | 1:17:57 | 1:18:00 | |
so that we don't take too much of our time on this. | 1:18:00 | 1:18:02 | |
..I said, as far as these fellows in jail are concerned, | 1:18:02 | 1:18:07 | |
you can help them for humanitarian reasons, | 1:18:07 | 1:18:10 | |
but you can't pay... | 1:18:10 | 1:18:12 | |
but that Hunt thing goes too far. | 1:18:12 | 1:18:15 | |
That's just damn blackmail. | 1:18:15 | 1:18:18 | |
It would have been damn blackmail if Dean had done it. | 1:18:18 | 1:18:22 | |
Now, that's in the record, | 1:18:22 | 1:18:24 | |
and that's certainly an indication that it wasn't paid. | 1:18:24 | 1:18:27 | |
But later on that day, at some point, | 1:18:27 | 1:18:29 | |
according to your later words to Haldeman, | 1:18:29 | 1:18:32 | |
you were told that it HAD been paid. | 1:18:32 | 1:18:34 | |
That... I...I agree... | 1:18:34 | 1:18:37 | |
that I was told that it had been paid. | 1:18:37 | 1:18:39 | |
But what I am saying here | 1:18:39 | 1:18:42 | |
is that the charge has been made that I directed it | 1:18:42 | 1:18:45 | |
and that it was paid as a result of what I... | 1:18:45 | 1:18:48 | |
..er... | 1:18:49 | 1:18:51 | |
said at that meeting. | 1:18:51 | 1:18:53 | |
That charge is not true | 1:18:53 | 1:18:56 | |
and it's proved by the tapes, which in so many cases can be damaging - | 1:18:56 | 1:19:01 | |
in this case, they're helping. | 1:19:01 | 1:19:02 | |
There's two things to be said to that. | 1:19:02 | 1:19:05 | |
One is, I think that the...the... | 1:19:05 | 1:19:09 | |
My reading of the tapes tells me, | 1:19:09 | 1:19:11 | |
trying to read it in an open-minded way, | 1:19:11 | 1:19:13 | |
that...that the writing, not just between the lines | 1:19:13 | 1:19:18 | |
but on so many of the lines, as I quoted, | 1:19:18 | 1:19:20 | |
is very, very clear that you were, in fact, | 1:19:20 | 1:19:22 | |
endorsing at least the short-term solution | 1:19:22 | 1:19:25 | |
of paying this sum of money to buy time. | 1:19:25 | 1:19:27 | |
That would be my reading of it. | 1:19:27 | 1:19:29 | |
But the other point to be said is, | 1:19:29 | 1:19:33 | |
here's Dean talking about this hush money for Hunt, | 1:19:33 | 1:19:38 | |
-talking about blackmail... -Mm-hm. | 1:19:38 | 1:19:40 | |
..and all of that, I would say that you endorsed or ratified it, | 1:19:40 | 1:19:43 | |
-but let's leave that on one side... -I didn't endorse or ratify. | 1:19:43 | 1:19:47 | |
Why didn't you stop it? | 1:19:47 | 1:19:49 | |
Because at that point... | 1:19:49 | 1:19:52 | |
..I had nothing... | 1:19:53 | 1:19:56 | |
..to...no knowledge of the fact that it WAS going to be paid, | 1:19:57 | 1:20:01 | |
I'd had no knowledge of the fact that... | 1:20:01 | 1:20:05 | |
what you have mentioned in the transcript of the next day, | 1:20:05 | 1:20:09 | |
where Mitchell said he thought it had been taken care of. | 1:20:09 | 1:20:12 | |
I think that was what the words were, words to that affect. | 1:20:12 | 1:20:16 | |
I wasn't there. I don't remember what he said. | 1:20:16 | 1:20:18 | |
That was only reported to me. | 1:20:18 | 1:20:21 | |
The point that I make is this. | 1:20:21 | 1:20:23 | |
It's possible... | 1:20:23 | 1:20:26 | |
it's a mistake that I didn't stop it. | 1:20:26 | 1:20:28 | |
The point that I make is that I did consider it. | 1:20:28 | 1:20:31 | |
I've told you that I considered it. | 1:20:31 | 1:20:33 | |
I considered it for reasons that I thought were very good ones. | 1:20:33 | 1:20:37 | |
I would not consider it for the other reasons | 1:20:37 | 1:20:43 | |
which would have been, in my view, bad ones. | 1:20:43 | 1:20:45 | |
But that night, though, the night of the 21st, | 1:20:45 | 1:20:49 | |
I mean, in the conversation with Colson after you'd been exchanging dialogue | 1:20:49 | 1:20:53 | |
about getting off the reservation and so on, | 1:20:53 | 1:20:56 | |
Colson said to you something about the fact that | 1:20:56 | 1:20:58 | |
it's the stuff AFTER the cover-up. | 1:20:58 | 1:21:00 | |
"I don't care about the people involved in the cover-up, | 1:21:00 | 1:21:03 | |
"it's the stuff after that's dangerous, | 1:21:03 | 1:21:05 | |
"Dean and other things, and the things that have been done." | 1:21:05 | 1:21:09 | |
And you said, as I'm sure you know, | 1:21:09 | 1:21:12 | |
"You mean, with regard to the defendants. | 1:21:12 | 1:21:14 | |
"Of course that was... That had to be done." | 1:21:14 | 1:21:18 | |
Brackets, laughs, whatever that means. | 1:21:18 | 1:21:20 | |
But, I mean, so that night you were saying that had to be done, | 1:21:20 | 1:21:24 | |
you were realising that doing something for the defendants | 1:21:24 | 1:21:27 | |
was a necessity? | 1:21:27 | 1:21:29 | |
No, I don't interpret that that way at all, | 1:21:29 | 1:21:32 | |
-I...I can't recall... -How do you interpret it? | 1:21:32 | 1:21:35 | |
I can't recall that conversation | 1:21:35 | 1:21:37 | |
and I can't vouch for the accuracy of the transcription on that, | 1:21:37 | 1:21:42 | |
but I do say... | 1:21:42 | 1:21:44 | |
It's an exhibit at the Watergate trial. | 1:21:44 | 1:21:47 | |
The tapes that have been made public, on the 22nd, | 1:21:47 | 1:21:53 | |
with regard to my... | 1:21:53 | 1:21:54 | |
and the one on the 21st as well, | 1:21:54 | 1:21:57 | |
with regard to the whole payments problem, | 1:21:57 | 1:22:00 | |
I think are very clear with regard to my attitude. | 1:22:00 | 1:22:03 | |
But on the short-term point, that was an exhibit | 1:22:03 | 1:22:06 | |
and part of the basic file at the trial | 1:22:06 | 1:22:10 | |
was that conversation, Colson saying, | 1:22:10 | 1:22:12 | |
"It's the stuff after that's dangerous," | 1:22:12 | 1:22:14 | |
and you saying, "You mean, with regard to the defendants. | 1:22:14 | 1:22:17 | |
"Of course that was... That had to be done." Brackets, laughs. | 1:22:17 | 1:22:21 | |
-I mean, that's absolutely on the record and authenticated and played publicly. -Yes. | 1:22:21 | 1:22:26 | |
Well, I can't interpret it at this time. | 1:22:26 | 1:22:28 | |
One of the other things that people find... | 1:22:28 | 1:22:33 | |
very difficult to take | 1:22:33 | 1:22:36 | |
in the Oval Office, on March 21st, | 1:22:36 | 1:22:39 | |
is the...is the coaching that you gave Dean and Haldeman | 1:22:39 | 1:22:45 | |
on how to deal with a grand jury without getting caught | 1:22:45 | 1:22:49 | |
and saying that perjury is a tough rap to prove, as you'd said earlier, | 1:22:49 | 1:22:53 | |
just be damned sure you say, | 1:22:53 | 1:22:55 | |
"I don't remember. | 1:22:55 | 1:22:57 | |
"I can't recall". | 1:22:58 | 1:23:00 | |
Is that the sort of conversation that ought to have been going on in the Oval Office? | 1:23:02 | 1:23:06 | |
I think that kind of advice is proper advice for...one who, | 1:23:07 | 1:23:15 | |
as I was at that time, | 1:23:15 | 1:23:17 | |
beginning to put myself in the position | 1:23:17 | 1:23:20 | |
of attorney for the defence, | 1:23:20 | 1:23:23 | |
er... | 1:23:23 | 1:23:24 | |
something that I wish I hadn't... had the... | 1:23:24 | 1:23:27 | |
felt I had the responsibility to do. | 1:23:27 | 1:23:31 | |
But I would like the opportunity, when the question arises, | 1:23:31 | 1:23:35 | |
to tell you why I felt as deeply as I did on that point. | 1:23:35 | 1:23:38 | |
Er... | 1:23:38 | 1:23:40 | |
Every lawyer, | 1:23:40 | 1:23:42 | |
when he talks to a witness who's going before a grand jury, | 1:23:42 | 1:23:46 | |
says, "Be sure that you don't volunteer anything, | 1:23:46 | 1:23:49 | |
"be sure if you have any question about anything, | 1:23:49 | 1:23:51 | |
"say that you don't recollect, be sure that everything... | 1:23:51 | 1:23:56 | |
"that you state only the facts that you're absolutely sure of". | 1:23:56 | 1:24:00 | |
Now, on the other hand, | 1:24:00 | 1:24:02 | |
I didn't tell them to say don't forget if you do remember. | 1:24:02 | 1:24:07 | |
That then would be suborning perjury. | 1:24:07 | 1:24:09 | |
-But the... -And I did not say that. | 1:24:09 | 1:24:11 | |
One of the things you repeated many times, | 1:24:11 | 1:24:16 | |
but I suppose most memorably, | 1:24:16 | 1:24:19 | |
or most clearly, on... | 1:24:19 | 1:24:21 | |
August...15th 1973, you said... | 1:24:21 | 1:24:26 | |
.."If anyone at the White House or high up in my campaign | 1:24:28 | 1:24:33 | |
"had been involved in wrongdoing of any kind, | 1:24:33 | 1:24:36 | |
"I wanted the White House to take the lead in making that known. | 1:24:36 | 1:24:41 | |
"On March 21st, I instructed Dean to write a complete report | 1:24:41 | 1:24:47 | |
"of all that he knew on the entire Watergate matter." | 1:24:47 | 1:24:52 | |
Now, when one looks through the record of what had gone on | 1:24:52 | 1:24:56 | |
just before and after March 21st, | 1:24:56 | 1:25:00 | |
on March 17th, the written statement from Dean, | 1:25:00 | 1:25:06 | |
"You asked for a self-serving goddamned statement | 1:25:06 | 1:25:10 | |
"denying culpability of principle figures," | 1:25:10 | 1:25:13 | |
when he told you that the original Liddy plan had involved bugging, | 1:25:13 | 1:25:17 | |
you told him to omit that fact in his document | 1:25:17 | 1:25:20 | |
and state it was for... | 1:25:20 | 1:25:22 | |
the plan was for a totally legal intelligence operation. | 1:25:22 | 1:25:25 | |
March 20th, as I'm sure you know, you said, | 1:25:25 | 1:25:27 | |
you want a complete statement but make it very incomplete. | 1:25:27 | 1:25:32 | |
On March 21st, after his revelations to you, you say, | 1:25:32 | 1:25:36 | |
"Understand, I don't want to get all that goddamned specific," | 1:25:36 | 1:25:40 | |
and Ehrlichman and you when you're talking on the 22nd, | 1:25:40 | 1:25:43 | |
and he's talking of the Dean report, | 1:25:43 | 1:25:45 | |
he says, "And the report says nobody was involved," | 1:25:45 | 1:25:50 | |
and there's several other quotes to that effect. | 1:25:50 | 1:25:52 | |
Was that...? The Dean report that you described, | 1:25:52 | 1:25:57 | |
it wasn't the same as what you described on August 15th, was it? | 1:25:57 | 1:26:00 | |
Well, what you're leaving out, | 1:26:00 | 1:26:02 | |
which is in that same tape that you've just quoted from, | 1:26:02 | 1:26:04 | |
is a very, very significant statement. | 1:26:04 | 1:26:06 | |
I said that John Dean should make a report, | 1:26:08 | 1:26:13 | |
and I said, "We've..." or, "We have to have a statement," | 1:26:13 | 1:26:17 | |
and then I went on to say, | 1:26:17 | 1:26:19 | |
"and if it opens doors, let it open doors." | 1:26:19 | 1:26:23 | |
-Now... -Now, with regard to the report being complete but incomplete, | 1:26:23 | 1:26:28 | |
what I meant was this, very simply. | 1:26:28 | 1:26:31 | |
I meant that he should state what he was sure of, what he knew, | 1:26:31 | 1:26:36 | |
because one day, he would say one thing, | 1:26:36 | 1:26:39 | |
another day, he'd say something else. | 1:26:39 | 1:26:41 | |
I didn't want him to answer, | 1:26:41 | 1:26:43 | |
and you'll find that also on one of the tapes. | 1:26:43 | 1:26:45 | |
I said, "Don't go into every charge that has been made. | 1:26:45 | 1:26:49 | |
"Go into only what you know." | 1:26:49 | 1:26:51 | |
And particularly go in hard on the fact | 1:26:51 | 1:26:55 | |
which he had consistently repeated over and over again - | 1:26:55 | 1:27:00 | |
no-one in the White House is involved, | 1:27:00 | 1:27:03 | |
that's what I wanted him to do. | 1:27:03 | 1:27:05 | |
But then you have a discussion | 1:27:05 | 1:27:06 | |
in the meeting with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean | 1:27:06 | 1:27:09 | |
where you're deciding what the policy's going to be. | 1:27:09 | 1:27:12 | |
Is it going to be a hang-out, ie, is it going to be the whole of the truth, | 1:27:12 | 1:27:16 | |
and in the end, it's decided that it's going to be - | 1:27:16 | 1:27:19 | |
one of the great phrases of Watergate - | 1:27:19 | 1:27:21 | |
"a modified, limited hang-out", | 1:27:21 | 1:27:23 | |
which is why I suggest the other quotes that I've quoted to you are decisive. | 1:27:23 | 1:27:27 | |
And then Ehrlichman goes on to say, | 1:27:27 | 1:27:29 | |
"I'm looking at the future..." | 1:27:29 | 1:27:31 | |
And now we already know it's a modified, limited hang-out, | 1:27:31 | 1:27:34 | |
and you can't have a modified, limited version of the truth. | 1:27:34 | 1:27:37 | |
It's not going to be the whole of the truth. | 1:27:37 | 1:27:39 | |
"I am looking at the future, | 1:27:39 | 1:27:41 | |
"assuming some corner of this thing comes unstuck at some time. | 1:27:41 | 1:27:45 | |
"You..." That's you. | 1:27:45 | 1:27:46 | |
"..are in a position to say, | 1:27:46 | 1:27:48 | |
"'Look, that document I published is the document I relied on, | 1:27:48 | 1:27:52 | |
"'that is the report I relied on.'" | 1:27:52 | 1:27:55 | |
And you respond, "That's right." | 1:27:55 | 1:27:58 | |
Now, you've decided the documents are going to be modified, | 1:27:58 | 1:28:01 | |
it's going to be limited, | 1:28:01 | 1:28:03 | |
and then you're going to rely on that document, | 1:28:03 | 1:28:06 | |
and so you're going to be able to blame it on Dean, | 1:28:06 | 1:28:08 | |
and it seems to me that that is consistent | 1:28:08 | 1:28:10 | |
with all the quotes that I have quoted | 1:28:10 | 1:28:13 | |
and not the one door quote that you've quoted. | 1:28:13 | 1:28:16 | |
That's your opinion and I have my opinion. | 1:28:16 | 1:28:20 | |
Dean was sent to write a report, he worked on it, | 1:28:20 | 1:28:24 | |
and he certainly would have remembered a phrase that was, | 1:28:24 | 1:28:31 | |
let me say, | 1:28:31 | 1:28:33 | |
a lot more easy to understand than "modified hang-out", | 1:28:33 | 1:28:38 | |
or whatever Ehrlichman said. | 1:28:38 | 1:28:40 | |
He would have remembered, "If it opens doors, it opens doors." | 1:28:40 | 1:28:44 | |
I meant by that I was prepared to hear the worst as well as the good. | 1:28:44 | 1:28:50 | |
What I don't understand about... March 21st is that | 1:28:50 | 1:28:57 | |
I still don't know why you didn't pick up the phone | 1:28:57 | 1:29:02 | |
and tell the cops. | 1:29:02 | 1:29:05 | |
I still don't know, when you found out | 1:29:05 | 1:29:07 | |
about the things that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had done, | 1:29:07 | 1:29:10 | |
that there is no evidence anywhere of a rebuke, | 1:29:10 | 1:29:14 | |
but only of scenarios and excuses, et cetera. | 1:29:14 | 1:29:20 | |
Nowhere do you say, "We must get this information | 1:29:20 | 1:29:24 | |
"direct to whoever it is, the head of the justice department, | 1:29:24 | 1:29:29 | |
"criminal investigation or whatever". | 1:29:29 | 1:29:31 | |
And nowhere do you say to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, | 1:29:31 | 1:29:36 | |
"This is disgraceful conduct". | 1:29:36 | 1:29:37 | |
And Haldeman admits a lot of it the next day, | 1:29:37 | 1:29:40 | |
so you're not relying on Dean. | 1:29:40 | 1:29:42 | |
"You're fired". | 1:29:42 | 1:29:43 | |
-Well, could I take my time now to...to address that question? -Mm. | 1:29:44 | 1:29:51 | |
I think it will be very useful | 1:29:51 | 1:29:54 | |
that you know what I was going through. | 1:29:54 | 1:29:57 | |
Er... | 1:29:57 | 1:29:58 | |
It wasn't a very easy time. | 1:29:58 | 1:30:00 | |
Er... | 1:30:00 | 1:30:02 | |
I think my daughter Trisha once said that... | 1:30:03 | 1:30:07 | |
..er... | 1:30:08 | 1:30:09 | |
there really wasn't a happy time... | 1:30:09 | 1:30:14 | |
in the White House, except in a personal sense... | 1:30:14 | 1:30:17 | |
er... | 1:30:17 | 1:30:19 | |
after April 30th, when Haldeman and Ehrlichman left. | 1:30:19 | 1:30:22 | |
You know, it's rather difficult to tell you, | 1:30:22 | 1:30:26 | |
four years later, how you felt, | 1:30:26 | 1:30:29 | |
but I think you'd like to know... | 1:30:29 | 1:30:31 | |
something new. | 1:30:31 | 1:30:32 | |
You see... | 1:30:36 | 1:30:37 | |
..I had been through a very difficult period | 1:30:39 | 1:30:44 | |
when President Eisenhower had the Adams problem. | 1:30:44 | 1:30:48 | |
And I'll never forget the agony he went through. | 1:30:50 | 1:30:54 | |
Here was Adams, a man that had gone through the heart attack with him, | 1:30:54 | 1:30:58 | |
a man that had gone through the stroke with him, | 1:30:58 | 1:31:00 | |
a man that had gone through the ileitis with him, | 1:31:00 | 1:31:03 | |
a man who had been totally selfless but he was caught up in a web. | 1:31:03 | 1:31:07 | |
Guilty? | 1:31:09 | 1:31:11 | |
I don't know. | 1:31:11 | 1:31:12 | |
I consider Adams then to be an honest man in his heart, | 1:31:12 | 1:31:18 | |
he did have some misjudgement, | 1:31:18 | 1:31:21 | |
but in any event, | 1:31:21 | 1:31:24 | |
finally, Eisenhower decided... | 1:31:24 | 1:31:27 | |
..after months of indecision on it - | 1:31:28 | 1:31:30 | |
and he stood up for him in press conferences over and over again, | 1:31:30 | 1:31:33 | |
and Haggerty did - | 1:31:33 | 1:31:35 | |
he decided he had to go. | 1:31:35 | 1:31:36 | |
You know who did it? | 1:31:38 | 1:31:39 | |
I did it. | 1:31:39 | 1:31:41 | |
Eisenhower called me in and asked me to talk to Sherm. | 1:31:42 | 1:31:46 | |
And so, here was the situation I was faced with. | 1:31:47 | 1:31:52 | |
Who's going to talk to these men? | 1:31:54 | 1:31:57 | |
What can we do about it? | 1:31:57 | 1:31:59 | |
Well, first, let me say that... | 1:31:59 | 1:32:02 | |
..I didn't have anybody that could talk to them but me. | 1:32:04 | 1:32:07 | |
I couldn't have Agnew talk to them... | 1:32:07 | 1:32:09 | |
..because they didn't get along well with him. | 1:32:10 | 1:32:14 | |
Bill Rogers wasn't happy with him either. | 1:32:14 | 1:32:17 | |
And so...not having a vice president or anybody else, | 1:32:17 | 1:32:22 | |
and Haldeman, my Chief of Staff, himself being involved, | 1:32:22 | 1:32:26 | |
the only man that could talk to him was me. | 1:32:26 | 1:32:28 | |
Now... | 1:32:30 | 1:32:33 | |
when I did talk to them, | 1:32:33 | 1:32:35 | |
it was one of the most... | 1:32:35 | 1:32:37 | |
..I would say, difficult periods, | 1:32:42 | 1:32:44 | |
..heart-rending... | 1:32:47 | 1:32:49 | |
Hard to use adjectives that are adequate. | 1:32:49 | 1:32:52 | |
..experiences of my life. | 1:32:52 | 1:32:54 | |
I never forget when I... | 1:32:54 | 1:32:56 | |
..heard...that on April 15th, from Henry Peterson, | 1:32:57 | 1:33:02 | |
that they ought to resign, | 1:33:02 | 1:33:04 | |
and Kleindienst thought they ought to resign, | 1:33:04 | 1:33:07 | |
and it took me two weeks... | 1:33:07 | 1:33:08 | |
I frankly agreed, incidentally, in my own mind that they had to go | 1:33:08 | 1:33:12 | |
on the basis of the evidence that had been presented. | 1:33:12 | 1:33:15 | |
But I didn't tell them that at that point. | 1:33:15 | 1:33:18 | |
I... When I say I agreed with it, | 1:33:18 | 1:33:21 | |
I didn't fully reach that conclusion, | 1:33:21 | 1:33:25 | |
because I still wanted to give them a chance to survive. | 1:33:25 | 1:33:30 | |
I didn't want to have them sacked as Eisenhower sacked Adams, | 1:33:30 | 1:33:36 | |
and Adams goes off to New Hampshire and runs a ski lodge | 1:33:36 | 1:33:41 | |
and was never prosecuted for anything. | 1:33:41 | 1:33:43 | |
Sacked because of misjudgement, yes, | 1:33:43 | 1:33:48 | |
mistakes, yes, | 1:33:48 | 1:33:51 | |
but...an illegal act | 1:33:51 | 1:33:55 | |
with an immoral, illegal motive, | 1:33:55 | 1:34:00 | |
no. | 1:34:00 | 1:34:02 | |
That's what I feel about Adams | 1:34:02 | 1:34:04 | |
that's the way I felt about these man at that time. | 1:34:04 | 1:34:06 | |
Now let me tell you what happened. | 1:34:09 | 1:34:11 | |
I remember Henry Peterson coming in on that Sunday afternoon. | 1:34:13 | 1:34:17 | |
Came in off his boat. | 1:34:19 | 1:34:21 | |
Er... He apologised for... | 1:34:21 | 1:34:25 | |
..being in his, er... | 1:34:26 | 1:34:28 | |
..sneakers and a pair of blue jeans and so forth, | 1:34:29 | 1:34:34 | |
but it was very important to give me the update | 1:34:34 | 1:34:37 | |
on what had...the developments that had occurred up till April 15th,. | 1:34:37 | 1:34:41 | |
And he said... He gave me a piece of paper | 1:34:41 | 1:34:44 | |
indicating that they had knowledge | 1:34:44 | 1:34:46 | |
of Haldeman's participation in the 350,000, | 1:34:46 | 1:34:49 | |
and they had knowledge of Ehrlichman's participation | 1:34:49 | 1:34:52 | |
in ordering... or what they indicated | 1:34:52 | 1:34:54 | |
that Ehrlichman had told Hunt to deep... | 1:34:54 | 1:34:58 | |
told the, er... | 1:34:58 | 1:35:01 | |
Gray to deep-six in papers and so forth and so on, | 1:35:01 | 1:35:05 | |
And he said, "Mr President, these men have got to resign, | 1:35:05 | 1:35:09 | |
"you've got to fire them." | 1:35:09 | 1:35:11 | |
And I said to him... I said, "But, Henry, | 1:35:11 | 1:35:15 | |
"I can't fire men simply on the basis of charges. | 1:35:15 | 1:35:18 | |
"They've got to have their day in court, | 1:35:19 | 1:35:22 | |
"they've got to have a chance to prove their innocence. | 1:35:22 | 1:35:26 | |
"I've got to see more than this | 1:35:26 | 1:35:28 | |
"because they claim that they're not guilty." | 1:35:28 | 1:35:33 | |
And...Henry Peterson, | 1:35:34 | 1:35:38 | |
very uncharacteristically, | 1:35:38 | 1:35:40 | |
because he's very respectful, | 1:35:40 | 1:35:42 | |
a Democrat, a career in civil service, splendid man... | 1:35:42 | 1:35:45 | |
..sat back in his chair and he said... | 1:35:46 | 1:35:49 | |
"You know, Mr President, what you've just said... | 1:35:52 | 1:35:55 | |
"..that you can't fire a man | 1:35:57 | 1:35:59 | |
"simply on the basis of charges that have been made | 1:35:59 | 1:36:03 | |
"or the fact that their continued service | 1:36:03 | 1:36:06 | |
"will be embarrassing to you... | 1:36:06 | 1:36:08 | |
"..that you've got to have proof before you do that," | 1:36:10 | 1:36:15 | |
he said, "that speaks very well for you... | 1:36:15 | 1:36:17 | |
"..as a man. | 1:36:18 | 1:36:20 | |
"It doesn't speak well for you as a President. | 1:36:20 | 1:36:23 | |
And in retrospect, I guess he was right. | 1:36:24 | 1:36:27 | |
So, it took me two weeks to work it out. | 1:36:31 | 1:36:34 | |
Tortuous, long sessions. | 1:36:34 | 1:36:36 | |
You've got hours and hours of talks with them, | 1:36:36 | 1:36:40 | |
which they resisted, we don't need to go through all that agony. | 1:36:40 | 1:36:43 | |
Then I remember the day at Camp David when they came up. | 1:36:43 | 1:36:46 | |
Haldeman came in first, standing as he usually does... | 1:36:48 | 1:36:51 | |
..not a dramatic Nazi storm trooper | 1:36:53 | 1:36:57 | |
but just a decent, respected, crew cut guy - | 1:36:57 | 1:37:00 | |
that's the way Haldeman was. | 1:37:00 | 1:37:01 | |
Splendid man. | 1:37:02 | 1:37:04 | |
And he says, "I disagree with your decision totally." | 1:37:06 | 1:37:10 | |
He said, "I think, eventually, | 1:37:11 | 1:37:13 | |
"you're going to live to regret it, but I will." | 1:37:13 | 1:37:16 | |
Ehrlichman then came in. | 1:37:17 | 1:37:20 | |
I knew that Ehrlichman was bitter | 1:37:20 | 1:37:22 | |
because he felt very strongly he shouldn't resign, | 1:37:22 | 1:37:25 | |
although he'd even indicted that Haldeman should go | 1:37:25 | 1:37:28 | |
and maybe he should stay. | 1:37:28 | 1:37:29 | |
I took Ehrlichman out on the porch at Aspen. | 1:37:31 | 1:37:34 | |
You've never been to Aspen, I suppose? | 1:37:34 | 1:37:37 | |
That's the presidential cabin at Camp David, | 1:37:37 | 1:37:41 | |
and it was springtime, the tulips had just come out. | 1:37:41 | 1:37:45 | |
I'll never forget, we looked out across, | 1:37:45 | 1:37:47 | |
it was one of those gorgeous days when the...you know... | 1:37:47 | 1:37:50 | |
No clouds were on the mountain, | 1:37:50 | 1:37:54 | |
and I was pretty emotionally wrought up. | 1:37:54 | 1:37:57 | |
And I remember that I could just hardly bring myself | 1:37:58 | 1:38:04 | |
to tell Ehrlichman that he had to go, | 1:38:04 | 1:38:07 | |
because I knew he was going to resist. | 1:38:07 | 1:38:10 | |
I said, "You know, John, when I went to bed last night..." | 1:38:10 | 1:38:14 | |
He said, "I hoped..." I said, "..I hoped... | 1:38:17 | 1:38:23 | |
"I almost prayed I wouldn't wake up this morning." | 1:38:23 | 1:38:25 | |
Well, it's an emotional moment. | 1:38:29 | 1:38:32 | |
I think there were tears in our eyes, both of us. | 1:38:32 | 1:38:35 | |
He said, "Don't say that." | 1:38:35 | 1:38:37 | |
We went back in, they agreed to leave. | 1:38:37 | 1:38:40 | |
And so... | 1:38:40 | 1:38:43 | |
it was late, but I did it. | 1:38:43 | 1:38:46 | |
I cut off one arm, then cut off the other arm. | 1:38:46 | 1:38:49 | |
Now, I can be faulted, I recognise it. | 1:38:51 | 1:38:55 | |
Maybe I defended them too long. Maybe I tried to help them too much. | 1:38:56 | 1:39:02 | |
But I was concerned about them. I was concerned about their families. | 1:39:03 | 1:39:08 | |
I felt that they, in their hearts, felt they were not guilty. | 1:39:08 | 1:39:12 | |
I felt they ought to have a chance, at least, | 1:39:12 | 1:39:15 | |
to prove they were not guilty. | 1:39:15 | 1:39:17 | |
And I didn't want to be in the position | 1:39:18 | 1:39:21 | |
of just sawing them off in that way. | 1:39:21 | 1:39:25 | |
I suppose you could sum it all up | 1:39:25 | 1:39:29 | |
the way one of your British Prime Ministers summed it up, Gladstone, | 1:39:29 | 1:39:34 | |
when he said that the first... requirement for a Prime Minister | 1:39:34 | 1:39:41 | |
is to be a good butcher. | 1:39:41 | 1:39:42 | |
I think the great story, as far as summary of Watergate is concerned, | 1:39:45 | 1:39:53 | |
I did some of the big things rather well. | 1:39:53 | 1:39:57 | |
I screwed up terribly on what was a little thing and became a big thing, | 1:39:57 | 1:40:03 | |
but I will have to admit I wasn't a good butcher. | 1:40:03 | 1:40:06 | |
Would you go further than mistakes? | 1:40:06 | 1:40:10 | |
That you've explained how you got caught up in this thing, | 1:40:10 | 1:40:14 | |
you've explained your motives, I don't want to quibble about any of that. | 1:40:14 | 1:40:20 | |
But just coming to the sheer substance, | 1:40:20 | 1:40:25 | |
would you go further than mistakes? | 1:40:25 | 1:40:27 | |
The word...that seems not enough for people to understand. | 1:40:27 | 1:40:33 | |
What word would you express? | 1:40:35 | 1:40:37 | |
My goodness, that's... | 1:40:42 | 1:40:43 | |
I think there are three things, since you ask me, | 1:40:43 | 1:40:48 | |
I would like to hear you say, | 1:40:48 | 1:40:50 | |
I think the American people would like to hear you say. | 1:40:50 | 1:40:53 | |
One is... | 1:40:53 | 1:40:55 | |
..there was probably more than mistakes, | 1:40:57 | 1:41:02 | |
there was...wrongdoing. | 1:41:02 | 1:41:05 | |
Whether it was a crime or not, yes, it may have been a crime too. | 1:41:05 | 1:41:09 | |
Secondly... | 1:41:10 | 1:41:13 | |
I did, | 1:41:13 | 1:41:16 | |
and I'm saying this without questioning the motives, right? | 1:41:16 | 1:41:19 | |
I did abuse the power I had as President | 1:41:19 | 1:41:23 | |
or not fulfilled the totality of the oath of office. | 1:41:23 | 1:41:28 | |
That's the second thing. | 1:41:28 | 1:41:30 | |
And thirdly, | 1:41:30 | 1:41:33 | |
I put the American people through two years of needless agony and I apologise for that. | 1:41:33 | 1:41:39 | |
And I say that you've explained your motives, I think those are the categories. | 1:41:39 | 1:41:46 | |
And I know how difficult it is for anyone, and most of all you, | 1:41:46 | 1:41:49 | |
but I think that people need to hear it, and I think unless you say it, | 1:41:49 | 1:41:56 | |
you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life. | 1:41:56 | 1:41:59 | |
I well remember | 1:42:02 | 1:42:03 | |
that when I let Haldeman and Ehrlichman know | 1:42:03 | 1:42:08 | |
that they were to resign... | 1:42:08 | 1:42:10 | |
that I had Ray Price bring in the final draft of the speech | 1:42:11 | 1:42:16 | |
that I was to make the next night. | 1:42:16 | 1:42:19 | |
And I said to him, "Ray," | 1:42:19 | 1:42:21 | |
I said, "if you think I ought to resign, put that in too, | 1:42:21 | 1:42:24 | |
"because I feel responsibly," | 1:42:24 | 1:42:28 | |
even though I did not feel | 1:42:28 | 1:42:30 | |
that I had engaged in these activities consciously... | 1:42:30 | 1:42:37 | |
..insofar as the... | 1:42:38 | 1:42:42 | |
..knowledge of or participation in the break-in, | 1:42:45 | 1:42:48 | |
the approval of hush money, | 1:42:48 | 1:42:50 | |
the approval of clemency, et cetera, | 1:42:50 | 1:42:54 | |
the various charges that had been made. | 1:42:54 | 1:42:56 | |
Well, he didn't put it in. | 1:42:56 | 1:43:00 | |
And I must say that at that time | 1:43:00 | 1:43:03 | |
I seriously considered whether I shouldn't resign. | 1:43:03 | 1:43:07 | |
But on the other hand, | 1:43:07 | 1:43:10 | |
I feel that I owe it to history | 1:43:10 | 1:43:14 | |
to point out that from that time on April 30th | 1:43:14 | 1:43:18 | |
until I resigned on August 9th, | 1:43:18 | 1:43:21 | |
I did some things that were good for this country. | 1:43:21 | 1:43:24 | |
We had the second and third summits. | 1:43:24 | 1:43:27 | |
I think one of the major reasons I stayed in office | 1:43:27 | 1:43:30 | |
was my concern about keeping the China initiative, | 1:43:30 | 1:43:36 | |
the Soviet initiative, the Vietnam fragile peace agreement. | 1:43:36 | 1:43:41 | |
And then an added dividend, | 1:43:41 | 1:43:45 | |
the first breakthrough in moving toward not love, | 1:43:45 | 1:43:51 | |
but at least not war in the Mid East. | 1:43:51 | 1:43:54 | |
-You... -And now, coming back to the whole point of... | 1:43:54 | 1:43:58 | |
..whether I should have resigned then, | 1:44:01 | 1:44:04 | |
and how I feel now... | 1:44:04 | 1:44:07 | |
Let me say I just didn't make mistakes in this period. | 1:44:07 | 1:44:11 | |
I think some of my mistakes I regret most deeply | 1:44:11 | 1:44:15 | |
came with the statements that I made afterwards. | 1:44:15 | 1:44:19 | |
Some of those statements were misleading. | 1:44:19 | 1:44:25 | |
Er... | 1:44:25 | 1:44:27 | |
I notice, for example, the editor of the Washington Post, | 1:44:27 | 1:44:31 | |
the managing editor, Ben Bradley, wrote a couple or three months ago | 1:44:31 | 1:44:35 | |
something to the effect that as far as his newspaper was concerned, | 1:44:35 | 1:44:39 | |
he said, "We don't print the truth, we print what we know, | 1:44:39 | 1:44:45 | |
"we print what people tells us... | 1:44:45 | 1:44:48 | |
.."and this means that we print lies." | 1:44:51 | 1:44:55 | |
I would say that the statements that I made afterwards | 1:44:59 | 1:45:02 | |
were, on the big issues, true, | 1:45:02 | 1:45:06 | |
that I was not involved in the matters that I have spoken about, | 1:45:06 | 1:45:10 | |
not involved in the break-in, | 1:45:10 | 1:45:12 | |
that I did not engage in and participate in | 1:45:12 | 1:45:17 | |
or approve the payment of money | 1:45:17 | 1:45:19 | |
or the authorisation of clemency, | 1:45:19 | 1:45:20 | |
which, of course, were the essential elements of the cover-up, | 1:45:20 | 1:45:24 | |
that was true. | 1:45:24 | 1:45:26 | |
But the statements were misleading | 1:45:26 | 1:45:29 | |
in exaggerating in that enormous political attack I was under. | 1:45:29 | 1:45:35 | |
It was a five-front war with a fifth column. | 1:45:35 | 1:45:39 | |
I had a partisan Senate committee staff, | 1:45:42 | 1:45:46 | |
we had a partisan Special Prosecutor staff, | 1:45:46 | 1:45:52 | |
we had a partisan media, | 1:45:52 | 1:45:55 | |
we had a partisan judiciary committee staff, | 1:45:55 | 1:45:58 | |
and the fifth column. | 1:45:58 | 1:45:59 | |
Under all these circumstances, | 1:45:59 | 1:46:01 | |
my reactions in some statements and press conversations after that, | 1:46:01 | 1:46:07 | |
I want to say right here and now, | 1:46:07 | 1:46:10 | |
I said things that were not true. | 1:46:10 | 1:46:12 | |
Most of them were fundamentally true on the big issues, | 1:46:12 | 1:46:17 | |
but without... | 1:46:17 | 1:46:20 | |
..going as far as I should have gone | 1:46:21 | 1:46:25 | |
in saying perhaps that I had considered other things | 1:46:25 | 1:46:28 | |
but had not done them. | 1:46:28 | 1:46:29 | |
-You mean the... -For all those things, I have a very deep regret. | 1:46:29 | 1:46:33 | |
You got caught up in something and then it snowballed? | 1:46:33 | 1:46:37 | |
It snowballed, and it was my fault. | 1:46:37 | 1:46:39 | |
I'm not blaming anybody else. | 1:46:41 | 1:46:43 | |
-So... -I am simply saying to you, that as far as I'm concerned... | 1:46:43 | 1:46:46 | |
..I not only regret it. | 1:46:48 | 1:46:51 | |
I indicated my own beliefs in this matter. | 1:46:53 | 1:46:59 | |
When I resigned, people didn't think it was enough to admit mistakes. | 1:46:59 | 1:47:03 | |
Fine. If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor, no, never. | 1:47:03 | 1:47:11 | |
Because I don't believe I should. | 1:47:12 | 1:47:16 | |
On the other hand, there are some friends who say, | 1:47:18 | 1:47:22 | |
just face them down, there is a conspiracy to get you. | 1:47:22 | 1:47:25 | |
There may have been. | 1:47:25 | 1:47:27 | |
I don't know what the CIA had to do... | 1:47:27 | 1:47:29 | |
Some of their shenanigans have yet to be told, | 1:47:29 | 1:47:32 | |
according to a book I read recently. | 1:47:32 | 1:47:34 | |
I don't know what was going on | 1:47:34 | 1:47:37 | |
in some Republican and Democratic circles, | 1:47:37 | 1:47:41 | |
as far as the so-called impeachment lobby was concerned. | 1:47:41 | 1:47:45 | |
However, I don't go with the idea | 1:47:45 | 1:47:48 | |
that what brought me down was a coup, a conspiracy, | 1:47:48 | 1:47:53 | |
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | 1:47:53 | 1:47:55 | |
I brought myself down. | 1:47:57 | 1:47:58 | |
I gave them a sword, | 1:47:58 | 1:48:01 | |
and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish. | 1:48:01 | 1:48:07 | |
And I guess, if I'd been in their position, | 1:48:07 | 1:48:09 | |
I'd have done the same thing. | 1:48:09 | 1:48:10 | |
But what I'm really saying is that, | 1:48:10 | 1:48:12 | |
in addition to the untrue statements that you've mentioned... | 1:48:12 | 1:48:16 | |
..could you just say, with conviction, | 1:48:18 | 1:48:21 | |
not because I want you to say it, | 1:48:21 | 1:48:25 | |
that you did do some covering up? | 1:48:25 | 1:48:29 | |
We're not talking legalistically now, I just want the facts, | 1:48:29 | 1:48:35 | |
I mean, that you did do some covering up, | 1:48:35 | 1:48:37 | |
but there were a series of times when, | 1:48:37 | 1:48:41 | |
maybe overwhelmed by your loyalties or whatever else, | 1:48:41 | 1:48:43 | |
but as you look back at the record, | 1:48:43 | 1:48:46 | |
you behaved partially protecting your friends, or maybe yourself, | 1:48:46 | 1:48:52 | |
and that, in fact, you were, to put it at its most simple, | 1:48:52 | 1:48:57 | |
a part of a cover-up at times? | 1:48:57 | 1:49:00 | |
No, I again respectfully | 1:49:00 | 1:49:03 | |
will not quibble with you about the use of the terms. | 1:49:03 | 1:49:09 | |
However, before using the term, I think it's very important for me | 1:49:09 | 1:49:15 | |
to make clear what I did not do and what I did do, | 1:49:15 | 1:49:17 | |
and then I will answer your question quite directly. | 1:49:17 | 1:49:20 | |
I did not, in the first place, | 1:49:22 | 1:49:27 | |
commit the crime of obstruction of justice, | 1:49:27 | 1:49:32 | |
because I did not have the motive required | 1:49:32 | 1:49:36 | |
for the commission of that crime. | 1:49:36 | 1:49:38 | |
-We've had our discussion on that. -The lawyers can argue that. | 1:49:38 | 1:49:41 | |
I did not commit, in my view, an impeachable offence. | 1:49:41 | 1:49:45 | |
Now, the house has ruled overwhelmingly that I did. | 1:49:46 | 1:49:50 | |
Of course, that was only an indictment | 1:49:50 | 1:49:53 | |
and it would have to be tried in the Senate. | 1:49:53 | 1:49:55 | |
I might have won, I might have lost. | 1:49:55 | 1:49:57 | |
But even if I'd won in the Senate by a vote or two, | 1:49:57 | 1:50:00 | |
I would have been crippled in any event for six months. | 1:50:00 | 1:50:04 | |
The country couldn't afford having the President in the dock | 1:50:04 | 1:50:07 | |
in the United States Senate. | 1:50:07 | 1:50:09 | |
And there can never be an impeachment in the future | 1:50:09 | 1:50:12 | |
in this country | 1:50:12 | 1:50:13 | |
without a President voluntarily impeaching himself. | 1:50:13 | 1:50:17 | |
I have impeached myself. That speaks for itself. | 1:50:17 | 1:50:20 | |
How do you mean, "I have impeached myself"? | 1:50:20 | 1:50:22 | |
By resigning. That was a voluntary impeachment. | 1:50:22 | 1:50:26 | |
And... | 1:50:26 | 1:50:28 | |
Now, what does that mean in terms of whether you're wanting me to say | 1:50:30 | 1:50:36 | |
that I participated in an illegal cover-up? No. | 1:50:36 | 1:50:40 | |
No. When you come to the period, | 1:50:42 | 1:50:44 | |
and this is the critical period, | 1:50:44 | 1:50:48 | |
but when you come to the period of March 21st on, | 1:50:48 | 1:50:51 | |
when Dean gave his legal opinion that certain things... | 1:50:51 | 1:50:57 | |
actions taken by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell et cetera, | 1:50:57 | 1:51:02 | |
and even by himself, | 1:51:02 | 1:51:05 | |
amounted to illegal cover-up and so forth, | 1:51:05 | 1:51:09 | |
then I was in a very different position. | 1:51:09 | 1:51:11 | |
And during that period I will admit | 1:51:11 | 1:51:15 | |
that I started acting as lawyer for their defence, | 1:51:15 | 1:51:19 | |
I will admit that, acting as lawyer for their defence, | 1:51:19 | 1:51:22 | |
I was not prosecuting the case. | 1:51:22 | 1:51:25 | |
I will admit that during that period, | 1:51:25 | 1:51:28 | |
rather than acting primarily in my role | 1:51:28 | 1:51:31 | |
as the chief and law enforcement officer | 1:51:31 | 1:51:33 | |
of the United States of America, | 1:51:33 | 1:51:37 | |
or at least with responsibility for law enforcement, | 1:51:37 | 1:51:39 | |
because the Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer. | 1:51:39 | 1:51:43 | |
But as the one with chief responsibility | 1:51:43 | 1:51:45 | |
for seeing the laws of the United States are enforced, | 1:51:45 | 1:51:50 | |
that I did not meet that responsibility. | 1:51:50 | 1:51:53 | |
And to the extent that I did not meet that responsibility, | 1:51:53 | 1:51:57 | |
to the extent that within the law, | 1:51:57 | 1:52:00 | |
and in some cases going right to the edge of the law, | 1:52:00 | 1:52:04 | |
in trying to advise Ehrlichman and Haldeman and all the rest | 1:52:04 | 1:52:08 | |
as to how best to present their cases, | 1:52:08 | 1:52:11 | |
because I thought they were legally innocent, | 1:52:11 | 1:52:15 | |
that I came to the edge. | 1:52:15 | 1:52:17 | |
And under the circumstances, I would have to say | 1:52:18 | 1:52:22 | |
that a reasonable person could call that a cover-up. | 1:52:22 | 1:52:28 | |
I didn't think of it as a cover-up. | 1:52:28 | 1:52:31 | |
I didn't intend it to cover up. | 1:52:31 | 1:52:33 | |
Let me say, if I intended to cover up, | 1:52:33 | 1:52:36 | |
believe me, I'd have done it. | 1:52:36 | 1:52:38 | |
You know how I could have done it so easily? | 1:52:38 | 1:52:42 | |
I could have done it immediately after the election | 1:52:44 | 1:52:47 | |
simply by giving clemency to everybody | 1:52:47 | 1:52:50 | |
and the whole thing would have gone away. | 1:52:50 | 1:52:52 | |
I couldn't do that because I said clemency was wrong. | 1:52:52 | 1:52:59 | |
But now we come down to the key point. | 1:52:59 | 1:53:02 | |
And let me answer it in my own way | 1:53:02 | 1:53:04 | |
about how do I feel about the American people? I mean... | 1:53:04 | 1:53:07 | |
How... Whether I should have resigned earlier. | 1:53:09 | 1:53:14 | |
Or what I should say to them now? | 1:53:14 | 1:53:17 | |
Well... | 1:53:18 | 1:53:19 | |
That forces me to rationalise now | 1:53:19 | 1:53:24 | |
and give you a carefully prepared and cropped statement. | 1:53:24 | 1:53:28 | |
I didn't expect this question, so I'm not going to give you that, | 1:53:28 | 1:53:31 | |
-but I can tell you this... -Nor did I. | 1:53:31 | 1:53:34 | |
I can tell you this. | 1:53:35 | 1:53:38 | |
I think I said it all | 1:53:38 | 1:53:40 | |
in one of those moments that you're not thinking, | 1:53:40 | 1:53:44 | |
sometimes you say the things that are really in your heart, | 1:53:44 | 1:53:47 | |
when you're thinking in advance, | 1:53:47 | 1:53:50 | |
and you say things that, you know, are tailored to the audience. | 1:53:50 | 1:53:54 | |
I had a lot of difficult meetings those last days before I resigned. | 1:53:55 | 1:54:00 | |
And the most difficult one, | 1:54:01 | 1:54:04 | |
and the only one where... | 1:54:04 | 1:54:06 | |
..I broke into tears... | 1:54:08 | 1:54:10 | |
..frankly, | 1:54:12 | 1:54:14 | |
except for that very brief session with Ehrlichman up at Camp David. | 1:54:14 | 1:54:19 | |
It was the first time I cried since Eisenhower died. | 1:54:19 | 1:54:21 | |
I met with all of my key supporters | 1:54:23 | 1:54:25 | |
just the half hour before going on television. | 1:54:25 | 1:54:28 | |
For 25 minutes, we all sat around at the Oval Office, | 1:54:29 | 1:54:34 | |
men that I'd come to Congress with. | 1:54:34 | 1:54:37 | |
Democrats and Republicans, about half and half. Wonderful men. | 1:54:38 | 1:54:43 | |
And at the very end, after saying, well, | 1:54:43 | 1:54:46 | |
thank you for all your support during these tough years, | 1:54:46 | 1:54:51 | |
thank you particularly for what you've done | 1:54:51 | 1:54:55 | |
to help us end the draft, bring home the POWs | 1:54:55 | 1:54:59 | |
and have a chance for building a generation of peace, | 1:54:59 | 1:55:04 | |
which I can see the dream that I had possibly being shattered... | 1:55:04 | 1:55:08 | |
..and thank you for your friendship, | 1:55:11 | 1:55:13 | |
little acts of friendship over the years, you know, | 1:55:13 | 1:55:16 | |
remembering you with a birthday card and the rest... | 1:55:16 | 1:55:19 | |
Then suddenly you hadn't got much more to say | 1:55:19 | 1:55:23 | |
and half the people around the table were crying. | 1:55:23 | 1:55:26 | |
Les Arends, Illinois, bless him, he was just shaking, sobbing. | 1:55:26 | 1:55:32 | |
And I just can't stand seeing somebody else cry, | 1:55:34 | 1:55:40 | |
and that ended it for me. | 1:55:40 | 1:55:41 | |
And I just... Well, I must say, I sort of cracked up, started to cry, | 1:55:43 | 1:55:49 | |
pushed my chair back... | 1:55:49 | 1:55:51 | |
..and then I blurted it out. | 1:55:52 | 1:55:54 | |
And I said... | 1:55:55 | 1:55:57 | |
"I'm sorry. I just hope I haven't let you down." | 1:55:57 | 1:56:01 | |
When I said, "I just hope I haven't let you down," | 1:56:04 | 1:56:08 | |
that said it all. | 1:56:08 | 1:56:09 | |
I had. | 1:56:09 | 1:56:11 | |
I let down my friends, | 1:56:11 | 1:56:14 | |
I let down... | 1:56:14 | 1:56:16 | |
..the country. | 1:56:19 | 1:56:20 | |
I let down our system of government | 1:56:21 | 1:56:24 | |
and the dreams of all those young people | 1:56:24 | 1:56:26 | |
that ought to get into government | 1:56:26 | 1:56:29 | |
but will think it's all too corrupt and the rest. | 1:56:29 | 1:56:33 | |
Most of all, I let down an opportunity | 1:56:33 | 1:56:37 | |
that I would have had for two-and-a-half more years | 1:56:37 | 1:56:42 | |
to proceed on great...projects | 1:56:42 | 1:56:48 | |
and programmes for building a lasting peace, | 1:56:48 | 1:56:51 | |
which had been my dream, as you know, | 1:56:51 | 1:56:54 | |
from our first interview in 1968, | 1:56:54 | 1:56:56 | |
before I had any thought I might even win that year. | 1:56:56 | 1:56:59 | |
I didn't tell you I didn't think I might win, but I wasn't sure. | 1:56:59 | 1:57:03 | |
Yep, I... | 1:57:04 | 1:57:07 | |
I let the American people down. | 1:57:07 | 1:57:09 | |
And I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. | 1:57:10 | 1:57:15 | |
My political life is over. | 1:57:15 | 1:57:17 | |
I will never yet and never again | 1:57:17 | 1:57:21 | |
have an opportunity to serve in any official position. | 1:57:21 | 1:57:25 | |
Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time. | 1:57:27 | 1:57:29 | |
And so... | 1:57:33 | 1:57:37 | |
I can only say that, in answer to your question... | 1:57:37 | 1:57:40 | |
..that while technically I did not commit a crime, | 1:57:41 | 1:57:46 | |
an impeachable offence... | 1:57:46 | 1:57:48 | |
These are legalisms. | 1:57:50 | 1:57:52 | |
As far as the handling of this matter is concerned, | 1:57:52 | 1:57:56 | |
it was so botched-up. | 1:57:56 | 1:57:59 | |
I made so many bad judgements. | 1:58:00 | 1:58:04 | |
The worst ones, mistakes of the heart rather than the head, | 1:58:04 | 1:58:07 | |
as I pointed out. | 1:58:07 | 1:58:10 | |
But let me say, a man in that top job, | 1:58:10 | 1:58:15 | |
he's got to have a heart. | 1:58:15 | 1:58:18 | |
But his head must always rule his heart. | 1:58:18 | 1:58:22 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:58:48 | 1:58:51 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 1:58:51 | 1:58:53 |