Original subtitles

- I know the truth is my ally in this,

and I think, ultimately, the truth is going to come out.

- The President's office,

the President's phone are all bugged.

- What would be the best way to reconstruct

those conversations? - Obtain the tape and play it.

- Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox arrived

to tell the grand jury that the President

had declined to turn over the tapes.

- The President wants you to fire Archibald Cox,

and I said, well, I've thought about it, and I can't do it.

- This is Nelson Benton at the White House.

President Nixon has discharged Archibald Cox

as Watergate special prosecutor,

and has abolished the Special Prosecution office.

Elliot Richardson has resigned his post as Attorney General,

and when Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus

refused to carry out orders from the President,

he was discharged as Deputy Attorney General.

- The FBI, acting upon orders from the President,

sealed off the Special Prosecutor's office.

- Six FBI agents present.

- No one is allowed in the room.

- I, along with my colleagues,

went down to the office on K Street.

There was press gathered outside.

Cameras everywhere.

Raw force had supplanted law.

It was the closest thing to a coup d'état

that our country ever experienced.

- I mean, I thought it was possible

that some of us would be arrested.

I mean, the President had mounted a coup.

What happens in a coup? I mean, you arrest people.

Right?

male narrator: Locked out of their own offices,

the prosecutors went upstairs to the library.

- Are you planning on continuing

with the investigation?

- I must say, I suppose that human emotions take over,

uh, in this kind of occasion,

because one thinks that in a democracy,

maybe this would not happen.

But when Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox,

he disastrously misjudged reaction from the public,

the courts, the media, and Congress.

Not to mention the special prosecutors themselves,

who were not about to roll over and play dead.

- We talked about what we were gonna do,

and some people...

Very few, actually, said, well, we ought to resign.

- And Archie said, "No, you should not.

"If you haven't been fired, you should do

everything you can to pursue this case."

- The President hadn't fired us, he'd fired Archie.

Nobody knew of our existence, really.

We were staff.

If in an oversight, Nixon had forgotten to fire us,

then we're here.

Uh, let's make him fire us.

- Uh, the White House announced last night

that you were abolished.

Now, when did you begin to

get word that you weren't abolished?

- You know, the White House announced we were abolished,

but if they announce the sky is green,

and then, you look up, and the sky is blue...

Um, a couple of weeks ago, I got word from the civil service

that I was a permanent employee of the government,

and that I had rights. We are gonna try like hell.

And that's the message I want to get across today.

We are here, and we are going to try.

We are a criminal prosecution force.

We have reason to believe there's been

some serious crime, and we want to prosecute it.

- It's no more Mr. Nice Guy.

We're gonna show that we've got teeth,

and the legal system is not to be trifled with.

The media and the public exploded immediately,

and in a way never before seen in American history.

And that, in turn, affected Congress.

- The President began hearing the clamor to resign

on the editorial pages of his friendliest publishers.

In Denver, in Atlanta, in Detroit.

- The New Orleans State's Item said the country faces

the gravest constitutional crisis in its history,

that the President is a dictator.

Only 16% of those polled

approved of the President's firing

of the special Watergate prosecutor.

An overwhelming 75% disapprove.

- Telegrams flooded into Washington, so did calls.

Western Union and the Capitol switchboard

both hired extra help.

- Well, we've had about 90,000 for impeachment,

and 2,700 against impeachment.

I would say, simply for me, as a personal experience,

it has been very reassuring that the American people

are watching what's going on in Washington.

And so, for the first time in over a century,

Congress started thinking about impeachment for real.

- The President is gambling.

Gambling that the Congress

doesn't have the courage to impeach.

I think the President will lose that gamble,

because I think the people, in their anger and outrage,

will insist upon impeachment.

- The increasing reports that Mr. Cox

was hot on the White House trail,

I think, has raised some of the most

important and gravest of questions

that the Congress and the American people

should understand and pursue.

- Right after the Saturday Night Massacre,

the outpouring was enormous. Enormous.

And I can't tell you how much that changed things.

- Judge Sirica asked you to come see him?

- He ordered a hearing within a day or two.

He was trying to protect us.

The guy who'd been in charge of running his grand jury

had been fired, and of course, he was looking to normalize us.

- Judge Sirica called in the grand jury.

We lawyers showed up. Nobody invited us.

But nobody said we couldn't go.

And we sat there, at counsel table,

while Judge Sirica instructed the grand jury

that despite the firing of Archie Cox,

they would continue their work as a grand jury.

Oh, and the Watergate special prosecution lawyers

will continue to advise you.

Judge Sirica wasn't the only official

who felt that way.

Three days after he resigned,

Elliot Richardson returned to the Justice Department

for a farewell speech and press conference,

and here's what happened.

- An astonishing thing is happening here.

He is getting an applause.

Not necessarily from the reporters,

but from the Justice Department employees

who are, as you see, lining the balcony.

This is unusual.

- Given my role in guaranteeing the independence

of the special prosecutor, as well as my belief

in the public interest embodied in that role,

felt equally clear that I could not discharge him.

And so, I resigned.

- Mr. Richardson? - Yes.

- Mr. Richardson, do you believe the President

should be impeached?

- The question of any ultimate judgment

to be made on these facts is in my view

a question for the American people.

- If you were in Cox's shoes then,

would you have done the same thing he would have done,

or something different?

- I would have done what he had done.

Richardson's appearance, televised live,

was the final event that broke Nixon's will.

Later that day, Nixon started a panicked retreat.

- There were gasps from the back of the courtroom.

Several reporters jumped for telephones.

- President Nixon has agreed to turn over the tapes

which he was commanded to do by the Court of Appeals.

- I've just informed Judge Sirica

that President Nixon will comply in all respects

with the order of this court,

as modified by the Court of Appeals.

This President does not defy the law.

But only two days after Nixon

started his retreat, with the vice presidency vacant

and the Mideast still at war, yet another crisis erupted.

A nuclear crisis, created by intelligence reports

of Russia moving nuclear weapons into the Mideast.

- The world's two nuclear giants,

the United States, and Russia, appeared on the threshold

of military confrontation.

It began suddenly and mysteriously.

- Nixon goes to DefCon III.

- Thousands of fighting men were sent packing,

warships hoisted anchor, and big B-52 bombers

some carrying nuclear warheads, were ready.

- Henry Kissinger has had a conversation with him that day

on the telephone in which Nixon is talking out of his head

about how the press and the prosecutors

were out to physically kill me.

"They're gonna kill me, Henry."

But given the timing, many suspected

that Nixon was faking a crisis

to divert attention from Watergate.

- We are attempting to preserve the peace

in very difficult circumstances.

There has to be a minimum of confidence

that the senior officials of the American government

are not playing with the lives of the American people.

Shortly afterwards,

Nixon held his press conference.

He tried to focus on Mideast peace.

- Ladies and gentleman, before going to your questions,

I have a statement with regard to the Mideast

which I think will anticipate some of the questions.

We obtained information which led us to believe

that the Soviet Union was planning to send

a very substantial force in the Mideast--

a military force.

Some thought that it was

simply a blown up exercise.

There wasn't a real crisis. I wish it had been that.

It was a real crisis.

It was the most difficult crisis we've had

since the Cuban confrontation of 1962.

At the same press conference,

Nixon continued his Watergate retreat.

- Turning now to the subject

of our attempts to get a ceasefire on the home front.

That's a bit more difficult.

We have decided that next week,

the acting Attorney General, Mr. Bork, will appoint

a new special prosecutor

for what is called the Watergate matter.

Uh, the special prosecutor will have independence.

He will have total cooperation from the executive branch.

But Nixon's announcement

didn't impress the media.

- What is it about the television coverage of you

in these past weeks and months that has so aroused your anger?

- Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger.

- I'm very sorry, but I have that impression.

- One can only be angry with those he respects.

- Mr. President, Mr. President? - Mr. Rather.

- I wonder if you could share with us your thoughts.

Tell us what goes through your mind

when you hear of people who love this country

and people who believe in you say reluctantly

that perhaps you should resign or be impeached.

- Well, I'm glad we don't take

the vote of this room, let me say.

The new special prosecutor

was Texas attorney Leon Jaworski.

Jaworski had actually been offered the job

before Archibald Cox, but had turned it down

because he had feared, correctly,

that he wouldn't have enough independence.

This time, he thought he would.

- Uh, I have always responded where I thought

that I could render a particular service.

Some special service... Uh, to my country.

Uh, this was a call to duty.

But many feared that anyone acceptable

to Richard Nixon wouldn't really do the job.

- Oh, no, indeed not.

Um, as I've indicated before,

Ms. Holtzman, the discussion was

that there would be no restraint on me to seek

whatever I believed was appropriate.

- Jaworski, a prominent lawyer from Texas,

who had served this country as being a Nuremberg prosecutor,

and having been involved in civil rights cases

on the right side also

was a Nixon supporter in the last election.

- We all were suspicious.

Who was this man? Why would he take the position?

Why was he replacing Archie?

If he was really gonna do the job,

why not just bring back Archie?

- Jaworski was extremely suspicious

of all of these Kennedy democrats

who had been prosecuting,

you know, pushing this investigation

of the President.

But he didn't bring a whole crew of people in,

which was a smart and somewhat courageous thing to do.

If I had been in his shoes,

I probably would have brought a few people with me.

Jaworski and the prosecutors

expected Nixon's tapes any day.

But once again, Richard Nixon had some surprises for them.

- We were waiting for the tapes,

expecting them momentarily, when Fred Buzhardt,

who was then the special counsel

to the President for Watergate,

went to court and said, "Well, you can't have the nine

you subpoenaed, because three of them are missing."

- When did you discover, sir, that the tapes were missing?

- This--this'll come out in the court, in due process.

- Do you think the public will believe this story?

Is it a recent discovery? - I don't know.

- The White House's handling of the tapes

and its recordkeeping was so sloppy

that there was no way to prove

the tapes hadn't been destroyed.

Records were kept on scraps of paper

torn from shopping bags.

- Last night, I read a thing on the air

about the tapes vanishing,

and the audience thought it was a sick joke.

- I wouldn't live in any other time than now.

I have to have my Watergate fix

every single morning in the paper.

Every day, he does something that interest--

It's sort of like a rat going around.

You keep trying to kill it, and he gets away.

- We get a call to come over to court,

and he says, there's a problem with another tape.

- An 18-and-a-half minute gap was found in a talk

between the President and H.R. Haldeman

three days after the Watergate break-in.

- When did the President learn that this tone

was on the tape, sir? - I don't know precisely.

- Well, why didn't he, for instance, say so

at his news conference the other day?

- I don't think he understood that it was--

at that time, that it was on a subpoenaed conversation.

- Or when he said-- - We did.

- Or when yesterday, when he said that there were

no further bombshells to come, why didn't the President say--

- Oh, I don't think this is a bombshell.

- We have an explanation that the tape was the result

of an error made by

the President's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

- Rose Mary Woods started working for him

when he was a young Congressman.

She was called "aunt" by his two daughters.

She and his wife, Pat, exchanged clothes.

She was definitely a family member,

and she was now a very major witness.

She was a suspect for a crime.

- This is the kind of Uher tape recorder Ms. Woods used.

It's designed so a secretary transcribing dictation

can start and stop it by pressing

or releasing a foot pedal.

- During my cross-examination of her, she said

"I must have accidentally hit record

instead of stop when the phone rang."

And so I asked her, "Okay, so you hit the wrong button.

"Your foot was on the pedal to make it revolve.

If you had taken your foot off, it would have stopped."

- Ms. Woods testified that she put the telephone

behind her ear, took notes throughout her conversation,

but she said she apparently kept her foot

on the foot pedal throughout.

- I said, let's demonstrate. So we plug in the machine.

I can see the tape's rolling.

I then say, so what did you do next?

She said, "Well, I had my foot on the pedal."

What did you do then? "Well, the phone rang,

"and the first thing I had to do

was I had to take off the headphones."

And she points. She's not moving.

She just delicately points to the headphones.

And with that slight movement, her foot came off the pedal.

The tapes stopped.

- Prosecutor Jill Volner now almost shouted

at what she noticed.

"You also just took your foot off the pedal."

And she said "Well, it's different in my office.

It's different here. I-I did it in my office."

So I said, well, Your Honor,

maybe we should adjourn to her office.

The next thing I knew, I was in a taxi cab

heading to the White House.

- Demonstrating what has come to be known as

the Rose Mary Stretch.

- She was physically able to keep her foot on the pedal

and roll to get the phone,

but there's no way that any human being

would have done that.

- Secretary Rose Mary Woods,

and quite an acrobat in her own right.

"Oh, yes, sir, I was just typing as usual,

"then the phone rang, my hand went here,

"and my foot went here--

"Well, I know it is a 15-foot spread, Your Honor,

but I am from a circus family, and, uh..."

- Under Judge Sirica's supervision,

the White House and we selected a panel of experts.

- The 18-minute gap in a subpoenaed White House tape

did not result from any single accident,

but from repeated erasure and re-recording.

- The story that Rose Mary Woods has told was baloney.

- I have told the same story.

I have told only the truth all the way through,

and I will repeat it to everybody in the world.

- Gobsmacked, we're calling witnesses.

Starting from the bowels of the White House,

up to and including Alexander Haig,

the Chief of Staff, a four-star general.

- General Alexander Haig returned to court today

to advance what he called a "devil theory"

to explain the mystery.

Perhaps some sinister force had come in,

and taken care of the information on that tape.

- And on what do you base that belief?

- Just my own knowledge of the situation,

and a degree of confidence

that that will be confirmed by the technicians,

and let's wait and see.

- Al Haig was part of the cover-up.

It's not about suspecting that he was.

Al Haig was an enabler.

- Who do you think did it?

- Well, someone who had access and motive,

and that would pretty much be President Nixon,

or Rose Mary Woods.

- After months of dispute, the White House

turned over the subpoenaed Watergate tapes

to federal Judge Sirica.

Presidential counsel J. Fred Buzhardt

carried them to the courthouse in a small metal box,

the lock sealed with red wax.

By now, Congress, the special prosecutor,

and the media were investigating every aspect

of Richard Nixon's life, and it turned out

there was a lot to investigate.

- On March 12, 1971, then Agriculture Secretary

Clifford Hardin refused to increase milk price supports.

On March 22nd, one of the largest dairy co-ops

donated $10,000 to the Nixon campaign.

And on March 25th, Secretary Hardin announced

an increase in milk price supports.

- The Nixon administration today

released a new and significantly higher figure

of how much public money has been spent

on the President's homes.

- Nearly $10 million has been spent at San Clemente,

Key Biscayne, and other

presidential vacation retreats.

- Phone call from President Nixon to Richard Kleindienst.

The President is said to have told him bluntly

not to press an antitrust action against ITT.

- There have been allegations that ITT offered funds

for the Republican convention to quash an antitrust case.

- President Nixon paid less than $1,700

in federal income taxes.

In response, Nixon tried a charm offensive,

touring the nation to meet

with journalists and supporters,

but it didn't go very well.

- Well, since you haven't raised some of these subjects,

I'll raise them myself. ITT.

How do we raise the price of milk?

I wish somebody'd ask me that one.

Uh, and who else wanted it raised?

What about the situation with regard to, uh,

the $1 million secret stock portfolio that you have?

A few of those things.

I think all of those things need to be answered,

and answered effectively. Let me just say this.

And I want to say this to the television audience.

I have never obstructed justice,

and I think, too, that I can say that

in my years of public life,

that I welcome this kind of examination.

Because people have got to know

whether or not their President is a crook.

Well, I am not a crook.

I've earned everything I've got.

- So you didn't think, by this time,

that Nixon was deeply himself involved in--

- Well, obviously, he was involved, look.

I had written--helped write a 6,000-word paper

on Watergate, for heaven's sakes.

The whole White House was consumed.

There was no doubt that he had talked to Dean,

and Haldeman and Ehrlichman were fired,

and all the rest of it.

The questions were simply did the President

commit an impeachable act, and was the Congress

of the United States going to impeach him?

- What we knew about Richard Nixon

is he had this fierce determination

that no matter how many times he got knocked down,

no matter how many times he was beaten,

that he was always going to, in the end, prevail.

- I can assure you that you don't need to worry

about my getting seasick or jumping ship.

I'm gonna stay in that helm until we bring it into port.

America hadn't had a Vice President

since Spiro Agnew's forced resignation in October.

But finally, in December, Congressman Gerald Ford

was confirmed by both houses of Congress and sworn in.

- That I will well and faithfully discharge.

- The duties of the office... - The duties of the office...

- On which I am about to enter.

- Uh...

Of the office on which I am about to enter.

- So help me God. - So help me God.

Ford, like most Republicans,

strongly defended Nixon.

But despite Republican opposition,

the House of Representatives, which has the sole power

to impeach the President,

started an impeachment inquiry.

If the House votes to impeach,

the President must stand trial in the Senate

with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding

and the Senate acting as jury.

Conviction requires a two-thirds vote.

If convicted, the President is removed from office.

In the Watergate case, the House Judiciary Committee

would first hold hearings,

and draft articles of impeachment.

And so, the impeachment inquiry was managed

by the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,

Peter Rodino.

Rodino came from a poor immigrant family,

had been a hero of World War II,

later attending law school at night,

supporting himself through menial labor,

and then entering Congress in 1949.

- Congress must deal with the crisis in confidence

now undermining the administration,

and the threat to our institutions

that has caused this crisis.

Elizabeth Holtzman was the Committee's

youngest and newest member.

- I was elected to office in 1972,

and took office in January '73.

And here I am, a young woman, given the opportunity

to sit in judgment of the President of the United States.

I mean, where else could this happen in the world?

Pete McCloskey entered Congress

to oppose the Vietnam War.

He was a Korean War hero who had become

an environmental lawyer, and was

a personal friend of John Ehrlichman.

But he was also the first Republican

to call for Nixon's impeachment.

- The public is going to demand that we impeach.

Congress, in this kind of a case,

is representative of the American people.

We will react to the American people's demand.

You know, that was a period of time

when the public didn't think much of the Congress.

But Peter Rodino was the hero of Watergate.

- Peter Rodino was brilliant and wise.

I think they understood the stakes.

Peter Rodino knew that impeachment would never work

if it were seen to be partisan.

So Rodino looked very hard and far and wide

to find a Republican to be the Chief of Staff

of the House Judiciary Committee's

impeachment inquiry.

And he found a Republican, John Doar.

That was the first signal of how serious this was.

- I worked on the House Judiciary inquiry

into the impeachment of President Nixon with John Doar.

John had a reputation for being a great trial lawyer.

Not being a flashy lawyer.

Being the opposite of a flashy lawyer.

He was successful in trying those cases

before somewhat hostile judges and hostile juries.

As Assistant Attorney General

for civil rights in 1961,

John Doar had walked with James Meredith

to integrate the University of Mississippi.

Later, he successfully prosecuted several

white supremacists for murdering

civil rights workers in the South.

- Chairman Rodino has offered to me,

and I have accepted the position of Special Counsel

to the Judiciary Committee's inquiry

in the possible impeachment charges

against the President of the United States.

To me, success is seeing that justice is done.

That the Constitution is preserved.

Doar ordered his staff to assemble

all the evidence related to Watergate.

But meanwhile, the special prosecutors

were getting their first look at the White House tapes.

- As soon as we got the tapes, we began listening to them.

- We had tape machines, we put on headphones,

and we listened.

- The dynamite tape was the March 21 conversation.

- It's growing daily. It compounds itself.

It is basically because one, we're being blackmailed.

Two, people are going to start perjuring themselves

very quickly to protect other people.

- Here was Dean, telling the President

that the President needed to save the presidency

by firing those who had engaged in this obstruction of justice,

and that these people, including himself,

John Dean, would have to go to jail.

And Nixon saying, wait a minute.

That's a little bit rash.

Don't you have to continue the payment of hush money

to the burglars?

Don't you need to keep this going?

- Two years.

- We could get that.

You could get a million dollars,

and you could get it in cash.

I know where it could be gotten.

- And then, you listen, and not only

is the President just a man, he's a criminal.

- The next payment to Howard Hunt, one of the burglars,

was made within a day.

The March 21 conversation was everything

that Dean had testified to, and more.

- I began by telling the President

that there was a cancer growing on the presidency.

- The tapes show that the Watergate cover-up

completely dominated their discussions.

Never, never was there any discussion

of obeying the law.

- It's devastating to listen to.

Even though you're expecting to hear

what John Dean had said had happened,

actually hearing the President of the United States

engaged in criminal conduct is disturbing.

- As soon as we listened to that tape,

we said, Leon has to listen to it.

So we brought Jaworski in,

and I watched him closely as he listened.

He had a poker face, but I could read it.

It seemed to me that at that point,

he knew that Nixon would not be able to survive as President.

- The Constitution says that a person can be impeached

for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

A high crime or misdemeanor meant

really, a serious abuse of power,

and one that could threaten the liberties

of the American people.

- No sitting President had ever been

indicted for a crime.

This was not a subject that Leon Jaworski

wanted to entertain.

He did not want that 800-pound gorilla on his back.

That gorilla was the property of the impeachment committee.

And in Leon's words, he did not want to adopt the gorilla.

I said, but you're going to have to.

The grand jury had formed their own opinion about Nixon.

- The grand jury wanted to indict him

when the indictments first came down,

while he was still President.

- The grand jury might on its own indict Nixon.

I said, here's what we can do.

Let's have the grand jury vote

on a list of unindicted co-conspirators

who they believe participated in this obstruction of justice.

And he agreed, so long as we did not publicize that list.

And the grand jury voted...

Some with two hands up,

when the name of Richard Nixon was put to them for a vote.

This was kept secret.

Another incredible,

explosive secret.

- Your staff has been studying for some time

the question of whether a President still in office

can be indicted in the criminal courts.

Has it reached a conclusion? - There is a great question.

A very, very strong question as to whether or not

a sitting President is indictable.

- By that, do you mean there are

strong reservations in your mind?

- What I mean is that it is far from settled,

that that can be done.

Jaworski didn't want to indict Nixon,

but he indicted Nixon's closest aides,

and named 18 more as unindicted co-conspirators.

- John Mitchell, Bob Haldeman,

John Ehrlichman, Chuck Colson.

These four men were indicted by the Watergate grand jury

on charges ranging from perjury to conspiracy.

- I have no comment whatsoever on what happened in Washington.

- I know that in the end, my innocence will be established,

and I put complete faith in God,

and I believe in my country.

And while Nixon was safe from indictment,

he wasn't safe from impeachment,

or from Dan Rather.

- As we all know, you are an experienced student

of the Constitution, and I think people

would be interested to know what you consider to be

an impeachable offense for a President.

- Well, Mr. Rather, you don't have to be

a constitutional lawyer to know that the Constitution

is very precise in defining what is an impeachable defense.

A--a--a, an impeachable offense.

A criminal offense on the part of the President

is the requirement for impeachment.

- Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather with CBS News.

Mr. President, Mr. President.

- Are you running for something?

- No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?

The House Judiciary Committee

was systematically gathering evidence and holding hearings.

- It was behind closed doors at this time,

because Rodino did not want any grandstanding

and he didn't want any disturbances.

And he wanted members of the committee

to pay attention.

It was really more like a trial.

The way it worked was we had black books.

Notebooks, three-ring notebooks.

And they had statements of fact.

And behind the statements of fact were proofs,

evidence that supported the statements of fact.

At that point, every member of the Committee

had a right to attack the facts.

To attack the Committee Staff reasoning.

To attack the statement of fact,

and say, no, that's not right.

So it was a very fair and deliberative process.

- John insisted that we read these statements.

I was the reader.

The first days, which were Watergate facts,

I read the statements.

So John told me I had to read them

in a very monotone, flat voice.

- And then, of course, there were hearings,

at which witnesses were called.

- John Dean appeared as a witness before

the House Judiciary Committee today, and testified.

But Watergate revealed a serious flaw

in the impeachment process.

The constitutional separation of powers

as interpreted by the federal courts

means that Congress usually

cannot subpoena presidential documents.

So if the White House controls the evidence,

Congress might never see it.

But in the Watergate case, the special prosecutors

understood this, and they had the evidence.

So they took action.

- Our view was, we don't indict the President

because the appropriate place

is to take care of this in a political process.

That's through an impeachment hearing.

Then those people ought to have the evidence that we have.

The House Impeachment Committee needed those tapes,

and probably would never have any other way to get them.

But we needed Judge Sirica's approval to do that.

- We asked permission to turn over what we called

a road map to impeachment to the Impeachment Committee.

It was basically, you know.

Here's--here are the criminal acts we're alleging.

Here's the evidence that supports them.

Here are the tapes that show this happened.

Here's the grand jury testimony.

- What the press referred to as a bulging briefcase

of evidence that showed that Richard Nixon

was an active participant in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

- Judge Sirica orders the Watergate grand jury's

sealed report on President Nixon

turned over to the House Judiciary Committee.

- Judge Sirica's willingness to send the tapes

and a report to the impeachment committee

was a critical decision.

Without these tapes,

the House Impeachment Committee

might not have nearly as convincing a case

as he knew existed and we knew existed.

Some people thought the evidence

in that briefcase alone constituted

sufficient grounds for impeachment.

But not John Doar or Peter Rodino.

- I think the special prosecutor

when they sent over the black briefcase said,

"We're thinking this is enough. This is it.

This is the--this will do it."

And that's not the way John thought about it.

What was in the black briefcase was an airtight case

from a prosecutor's point of view

around the payment of the money.

The Hunt situation.

Hunt wants money. We're gonna get it.

It's not a good conversation at all,

but it doesn't quite get

to using the power of the presidency.

High crimes, misdemeanors, bribery, treason.

It wasn't, either, the smoking gun,

or it shouldn't have been the smoking gun.

Doar and Rodino wanted Nixon impeached,

but they wanted an airtight case

proving that Nixon had abused presidential power,

so the House Judiciary Committee

subpoenaed more tapes. Nixon, of course, resisted.

- Has the White House complied with the subpoena?

- No, the White House has not complied with the subpoena.

We made a request,

which hasn't been specifically complied with.

And then, Evan Davis got a phone call

from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

for whom he had once worked.

- I got a call from Justice Stewart,

who wanted to have lunch.

At one point, he let drop that the committee should not count

on the Supreme Court to enforce a Congressional subpoena.

But that was a very different thing than a criminal subpoena.

This was a potentially fatal problem.

In fact, the federal courts ruled against

the Senate Watergate Committee's subpoenas,

but by now, the prosecutors fully understood

the importance of the tapes for impeachment,

and they had a way to get them.

And so, five days after the House Judiciary Committee

issued its subpoena, the prosecutors issued theirs.

- We have the indictment. We're preparing for trial.

We are pursuing a second tranche of tapes

as part of a trial subpoena.

The first was a grand jury subpoena.

This is now a trial subpoena.

- A subpoena signed today by Jaworski seeks to obtain

evidence to be used in the trial

of seven former White House aides

and Nixon re-election officials.

All 64 subpoenaed conversations

involved President Nixon.

- The White House opposes.

- President Nixon, during this period of time,

has to make very difficult decisions.

He can't always make the popular decision.

Once again, Nixon tried to avoid

surrendering the tapes by offering a compromise.

This time, he released what he said

were complete, accurate transcripts.

But once again, he badly misjudged public reaction.

- In these folders that you see over here on my left

are more than 1,200 pages of transcripts

of private conversations I participated in

with my principal aides and associates

with regard to Watergate.

Everything that is relevant is included.

The rough, as well as the smooth.

- Maybe, just maybe if I give them a little bit of it,

that that'll be enough.

- Washington found itself with a new best-seller

on its hands today.

- 1,308 pages. 5 pounds, 8 ounces.

$12.25.

It is one of the most fascinating documents

ever published by the government printing office

which had sold all available copies before noon today.

But while Nixon provided the transcripts,

he was still furiously resisting

release of the tapes themselves.

- I have furnished not only to the Congress,

but to the American people,

all of the relevant evidence with regard to an issue

that has been of very great interest

to the American people.

And I simply say this tonight.

The time has come to get Watergate behind us,

and get on with the business of America.

Within days, publishers printed and sold

millions of paperback copies.

The television networks staged readings.

- The President. - How much money do you need?

- Dean. - I would say these people

are going to cost a million dollars

over the next two years.

- That night, according to court records, Hunt's lawyer

received another secret $75,000 payment.

- Racial and ethnic slurs. I was surprised.

- That Howard Baker is a "smoothy."

That Patrick Gray is "not very smart."

Even with the tapes, and the unverified transcripts,

a good deal is still missing.

For instance, in just nine minutes,

the words of Mr. Nixon and Haldeman and Ehrlichman

are said to be unintelligible 54 times.

- My very first reaction is,

in terms of the Nixon presidency...

Possibly fatal.

And for those who had heard the few tapes

that Nixon had already surrendered,

there was another problem.

As bad as the transcripts showed Nixon to be,

they were still too nice to him

because the transcripts were inaccurate.

Very inaccurate.

- It was clear to us from the fact that we had

a bunch of the tapes that they weren't

very accurate transcripts of the ones we had.

So presumably, they weren't accurate transcripts

of the ones we didn't have.

In fact, the inaccuracies

strengthened the case for impeachment,

and intensified the committee's demands

for the actual tapes.

- The transcripts didn't match

what was said on the tape.

That is what, you know, people talk about

is a very bad fact.

The President had, I think, publicly stated his role

in helping review the tapes for these transcripts.

And they didn't match.

So that was another fact implicating him directly.

- I don't see why the White House--

if they're willing to give us edited transcripts,

why they wouldn't also be willing to give us tapes,

so that we could listen to the tapes,

those of us that wanted to.

- The tone of the President's voice is crucial.

The complete record of what he said is crucial.

Verifying the authenticity of the tape itself is crucial.

And that can only be done by receiving the tapes,

and by having the President comply

with the House Judiciary Committee subpoena in full.

Nixon could probably defeat

the Judiciary Committee's subpoena in court,

but the special prosecutors were another matter,

and they moved aggressively to enforce their subpoena.

- Judge Sirica enforces the subpoena.

The White House refuses to honor Judge Sirica's order.

- I am following the precedent that every President,

Democrat and Republican, since the time of Washington

has followed, and that is of defending

the confidentiality of presidential conversations

and communications.

- Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler today

attacked the special prosecutor for attempting

"excessive encroachment into the office of the Presidency."

- Really, the President's not just defying

the special prosecutor.

He is defying the judicial process.

- So we appealed from Sirica's order,

and directly to the Supreme Court

over the Court of Appeals.

Even though we had won, we took an appeal.

We had to have some resolution.

Clearly gonna go to the Supreme Court.

- The U.S. Supreme Court,

acting as swiftly as it ever has,

today announced it will review the special Watergate

prosecutor's complaint against President Nixon.

It was just one week ago today

when Leon Jaworski asked the court to rule

on the President's defiance of a subpoena

for more White House tapes.

It was yesterday when the President's lawyer

asked the court not to rush to judgment,

and allow the case to be heard in the Court of Appeals.

But this afternoon, the court said it would hear

oral arguments in about five weeks,

which set the stage for a possible confrontation

between the President and the high court

on the issue of executive privilege.

- For the first time in its 185-year history,

the Supreme Court agreed to extend its term

beyond June and into July for a hearing on the 8th.

The official reason for the extraordinary consideration

given this appeal is that the tapes are needed as evidence

in the Watergate cover-up trial,

which is scheduled to begin in September.

But today's actions could have a far more important impact

in the impeachment proceedings across the street in Congress.

If the case had been handled in the normal way,

the Supreme Court's decision would probably not

have come until next year.

Too late to have an impact on impeachment.

But now, President Nixon could be confronted

with an adverse decision from the Supreme Court

just as the House of Representatives

prepares to vote on impeachment this summer.