Original subtitles

- Good evening.

The men who worked closest to Richard Nixon

in the White House and in politics,

today, were sentenced to prison

for their role in the Watergate cover-up.

Former Attorney General John Mitchell...

- Anybody puts one of those near me

I'm gonna knock it down his throat.

- White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Bob Haldeman...

- I'm prepared now to accept the results.

- Mr. Nixon's Domestic Affairs Counselor, John Ehrlichman.

- Give each other room, man. - Yes, sir.

- All were sentenced to at least 2 1/2 years in prison.

- I want it implemented on a thievery basis.

Goddammit, get in and get those files.

Blow the safe and get it.

We're up against an enemy.

A conspiracy.

They're using any means.

We are going to use any means.

- We have a mystery story out of Washington.

Five people have been arrested

and charged with breaking into the headquarters

of the Democratic National Committee

in the middle of the night.

- Police confiscated extensive photographic

and electronic eavesdropping gear

as well as several thousand dollars

in consecutively numbered bills.

- Please get me the names of the Jews.

Big Jewish contributors to the Democrats.

Could we please

investigate some of the cocksuckers.

- Mr. President. - Mr. Rather.

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

Tell us what goes through your mind...

when you hear people... 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.

Uh...

male narrator: The presidency of Richard Nixon

was in many ways a reaction to a nation in chaos.

By 1967, protest movements, racial tension,

and the Vietnam War were tearing America apart.

Vietnam threatened to dominate the 1968 presidential election

dividing the country into hawks and doves.

Over a million Americans had been drafted.

There were 1/2 million troops in Vietnam...

and over 20,000 Americans had already been killed.

- If America's soul becomes totally poisoned...

part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.

- My people are being clobbered and stoned.

And then they will turn around and send us to war.

For what?

- What we do know is that our military situation

has substantially improved.

And then came 1968,

starting with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam,

which turned millions of Americans against the war.

- The Viet Cong simultaneously attacked

just about every major city and town in South Vietnam.

Much of the destruction was caused by Viet Cong

but much of it was also caused by United States bombs.

An American officer said it had been necessary

to destroy the city to save it.

- To say that we are closer to victory today

is to believe in the face of the evidence

the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

The 1968 presidential campaign

mirrored America's chaos.

- I shall not seek...

and I will not accept the nomination of my party

for another term as your president.

- The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

was shot to death by an assassin late today

as he stood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.

- Everybody out!

- Oh, no.

- Senator Robert Francis Kennedy...

died at 1:44AM.

He was 42-years-old.

After Robert Kennedy's assassination...

Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the democratic nomination

but the antiwar movement

wouldn't let Humphrey off the hook

and at the 1968 Democratic Convention,

police beatings of antiwar demonstrators

tore the Democratic Party apart.

- A noisy but non-violent crowd jammed the streets

as Chicago police charged suddenly in all directions.

They jabbed night sticks into stomachs and skulls,

battering demonstrators and bystanders

who were hopelessly trapped on sidewalks,

in panic, with nowhere to run.

Racist former Alabama Governor,

George Wallace, ran as a third party candidate

and carried most of the traditionally

democratic south.

- But any place you see the Confederate flag fly,

you will see people who will fight with more zeal

and determination for the American flag

than anybody I know.

With the country divided and disillusioned

by Vietnam, many Americans wanted a savior

and Nixon promised to be one.

- My fellow Americans, the long, dark night

for America is about to end.

- Nixon's media image was carefully packaged

by a young man named Roger Ailes,

who would later create FOX News.

- I pledge to you,

we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.

With those promises and with the Democratic party

divided and crippled by Vietnam,

Nixon won the presidency.

- The president-elect, Richard Nixon.

- My general opinion was, he's well qualified.

I felt a kind of deep sigh of relief,

the Johnson years were over.

A chance for the country, if you will,

to take its collective breath and start over

and I was fairly optimistic.

But Richard Nixon hated the privileged,

the media, and enemies both real and imagined.

Demons that eventually led to Watergate.

The first sign of possible trouble

came from his presidential appointments.

As National Security Advisor, Nixon chose

a brilliant Harvard professor,

Henry Kissinger.

- We will not be blackmailed into an agreement.

And if I may say so...

we will not be charmed into an agreement...

until its conditions are right.

For Attorney General,

Nixon chose his friend

and campaign manager, John Mitchell.

A hardliner on law and order,

drugs, and Vietnam.

- They spread the idea that any act,

no matter how monstrous, is justifiable

if it is in what they refer to as their cause.

And to run the White House, Nixon chose

John Ehrlichman and H.R. Bob Haldeman.

Both devout Christian scientists.

Ehrlichman was a lawyer with a thin skin

and a sharp tongue.

- Contrary to the, uh...

statements of the Eastern Establishment press...

uh... which, uh...

understandably confuses the location of all cities

west of the Mississippi.

I do not come from Portland, I come from Seattle,

and they are not suburbs of one another.

Haldeman was an advertising executive

with a reputation for ruthlessness.

- Just after Richard Nixon was elected president

and I was the White House correspondent at the time,

H.R. Bob Haldeman, the new Chief of White House Staff,

he had asked to meet with me in a small restaurant.

And he looked me in the eye in a very cold way and said,

"Dan Rather, we know who you are

"and what you are and we know what you're after

and we'll be watching you the whole time."

Ehrlichman and Haldeman, as a pair,

became Nixon's gatekeepers and enforcers.

The White House staff called them

the "German Shepards" or the "Berlin Wall."

As soon as he took office, Nixon began alienating

both the media and the antiwar movement.

In his campaign, he had promised

to end the Vietnam War but instead,

he initially expanded it by secretly bombing Cambodia,

invading Cambodia,

and escalating the bombing of Vietnam.

- Because let us understand...

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States.

Only Americans can do that.

The antiwar movement and the media

exploded in anger and that triggered Nixon's dark side.

This is David Mixner, who at the age of 23,

became one of the four co-chairmen

of the Vietnam Moratorium antiwar organization.

Mixner was totally committed, but he had a secret.

- At first the Nixon people tried to treat us nice

and then they... threatened us

and I had meetings with Ehrlichman and Kissinger...

and I was blackmailed

in an attempt to get me out of the antiwar movement.

Well, I was very closeted

and if I hadn't been I would not have been allowed

to participate at the leadership level...

that I was at.

It just was, in the times, in 1969,

would have been a horrible liability,

public relations wise.

So... you'd go to a bar,

that was down an alley and had no sign on it,

and in walked a gentleman

who I fell head over heels in love with.

He liked all the poets I liked, the music I liked,

and I got a key and went back for, oh, near 30 days

and it was beautiful, beautiful.

One weekend we were gonna meet at a restaurant.

I went to the restaurant and two guys show up...

with badges.

And they emptied on the table very explicit photographs

of Frank and I having sex.

They said, "Think about it but we want you out

of the antiwar movement."

I went to warn Frank.

Opened the apartment and there wasn't a stick

of furniture, a book, or a record in it.

Never saw him again.

Don't even know if he was Frank.

After contemplating suicide,

Mixner decided to continue his work.

- On October 15th, 1969,

we were gonna bring the nation to a standstill,

to a moratorium.

And then we met with Ehrlichman.

He said, "You know this march isn't going to take place."

We said, "Well, of course it is."

And then before he left...

I remember him tapping my knee...

And saying, "David."

And I said, "Yes, sir?"

He said, "We know all about you.

All about you. Don't forget that."

- Vietnam Moratorium Day.

The largest demonstration against the Vietnam War

the nation has ever experienced.

- In the end we had 2 million people demonstrate.

Covers of "TIME" magazine, "LIFE" magazine.

It was the biggest news story that year.

By this time, even Henry Kissinger's advisors

were warning him that escalation in Vietnam

wouldn't work.

- I had consulted for Henry Kissinger

almost as soon as he was appointed

in the fall right after the election in 1968

as National Security Advisor.

And I did a study for him,

of options in Vietnam

and I said, "I don't think there is

a win option in Vietnam."

It was clear to me that

nothing we were doing would succeed

and would only prolong a stalemated war.

Killing a lot of people to no end effectively.

And Mort Halperin,

who was Kissinger's deputy at that point,

and I, I think, agreed.

- The South Vietnamese Army was completely corrupt.

That it was incapable of defending itself.

That when we left, it would fall apart.

We knew, for example, that of every three rifles we gave

to the South Vietnamese Army, one of them...

we gave it to a person who was actually in the Viet Cong

because about 1/3 of the South Vietnamese Army

was actually Viet Cong.

And then the second of the 1/3 was given to somebody

who's totally corrupt and immediately sold it

on the black market to the Viet Cong.

So we were supplying 2/3 of the weapons

to the enemy.

Disillusioned with Kissinger,

Halperin resigned.

But despite increasing evidence

and expert advise that Vietnam couldn't be won,

Nixon and Kissinger still couldn't accept defeat.

We know this from Nixon's White House tapes.

In early 1971, Nixon secretly installed a taping system.

Bob Haldeman was the only senior official

who knew the system existed

and one of the very first conversations recorded

was about Vietnam.

- Thank God we're not going to lose.

You say the air is pounding them good.

- They're pounding them.

They're putting every B-52 they've got in there.

- Main thing is to be sure...

the South Vietnamese fight well.

If they fight well, North Vietnam...

can never beat South Vietnam.

South Vietnam has more people. - And more equipment.

- We've gotta stay as long as we're needed there.

Kennedy and the libs all get together and...

- And this bastard Halperin. Used to be on my staff.

Mr. President, I'm convinced you're now 80% of the way.

- Nixon and Kissinger's overriding priority

regarding Vietnam was not

the future of South Vietnam.

It was the future of American prestige.

Each day, to facilitate the process

by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam,

someone has to give up his life...

so that the United States doesn't have to admit something

that the entire world already knows.

So that we can't say that we've made a mistake.

Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be,

and these are his words,

"The first president to lose a war."

When escalation didn't bring victory,

Nixon started withdrawing ground troops.

But to prevent South Vietnam from collapsing,

he intensified American bombing.

The United States dropped 7 million tons of bombs

during the Vietnam War.

50% more than in all of World War II.

And also used napalm and cancer-causing defoliants.

Killing over a million civilians.

- I had come back from Vietnam

believing that we should get out of Vietnam.

Left the government.

Went to the RAND Corporation.

Actually, one of the first things I did there

was to be assigned to a study group

that was preparing the McNamara study

but then became more well known as

the Pentagon Papers.

The Pentagon Papers, 7,000 pages long,

documented the history of American failure

and dishonesty in Vietnam.

Showing that many experts and government officials

had known the war was unwinnable.

- The Pentagon Papers show that on...

at several critical moments...

the government lied. Just straight-out lied.

- That simply put the question in my mind:

What can I do to help end this war

now that I'm ready to go to prison?

And so in 1971,

Daniel Ellsberg decided to do something.

Something that triggered all of Richard Nixon's demons.

- "The New York Times" began publishing parts

of a voluminous report that the Pentagon had drawn up

on the causes and conduct

of American involvement in Vietnam.

- Henry Kissinger exploded over it.

Kissinger came in and said

we got to do something about this

because we can't conduct secret negotiations

if we can't maintain our secrets.

- The Justice Department went to court in New York today

and got a temporary order restraining "The Times"

from publishing the next and last two installments.

- The American press unites in this massive force.

"The Times" is stopped from publication

and "The Washington Post" rushes into the breach.

"The Post" is stopped from publication

and "The St. Louis Post Dispatch"

and "The Boston Globe" continue.

- 17 papers in all had brought them out by this time.

It was a wave of civil disobedience.

- A name has now come out as the possible source

of "The Times" Pentagon documents.

It is that of Daniel Ellsberg, 40-years-old,

one-time marine, later a top-policy analyst

for the Defense and State Departments

during the Vietnam build up.

- Finally, only when I had gotten rid of

all of the copies that I had, I surrendered.

Was charged initially with three counts of felonies,

which later became 12,

for a possible sentence of 115 years in prison.

- As it came out that it was Ellsberg

who was the person who leaked the papers,

Kissinger began to get a little nervous because

he was the one who brought Ellsberg into the counsels

of the Nixon administration during the transition period.

And he starts spinning these lurid tales

about Ellsberg which Nixon just gobbles up.

- It started as the Ellsberg story.

Front page, big black type.

- Curse that son of a bitch. I know him well.

- You know him? - Well.

- He's nuts, isn't he? - Nuts.

- Why did they have him in the Defense Department?

- Well, Mr. President, he's a funny guy.

He's a genius.

Brightest student I've ever had.

He was a hardliner. Volunteered for Vietnam.

He was so nuts.

He'd drive around all over Vietnam with a carbine.

When it is guerilla-infested,

he'd shoot at peasants in the fields

on the theory that everyone in black...

- He's a born killer.

- He's always been a little unbalanced.

- It's the most slanderous lie that could be made of me.

He also said that I was his most brilliant student.

I'd never been a student of his for a minute.

- They brought him into defense

and he came back from Vietnam but he flipped, late '67,

suddenly turned into a peacenik.

He's moved into more and more radical position.

- What do you suppose "The Times" paid him for this?

- He wouldn't do that for money.

- Well, they do if they're on dope.

- He's married a very rich girl he doesn't need money.

- Well, the other reason is that this is a labor of love

for "The Times."

There's nobody in "The Times" that's for us on Vietnam.

- You can maybe blackmail Johnson

on the bombing halt stuff.

Huston swears there's a file on it at Brookings.

- I wouldn't be surprised.

Tom Huston was a hard-line official

who had developed an aggressive

and highly illegal plan for spying on

the antiwar movement.

Huston and his plan were stopped by federal officials,

but Nixon wanted to go even further.

Including breaking into the Brookings Institute,

a moderate think tank in Washington.

- Now you remember Huston's plan?

Implement it.

I want it implemented on a thievery basis.

Goddammit, get in and get those files.

Blow the safe and get it.

male narrator: Richard Nixon's angry cutthroat edge

came from his background.

His family was poor, his father was harsh,

and two of his brothers died in childhood.

When Harvard invited Nixon to apply,

his parents told him they couldn't afford it.

Forcing him to attend Whittier College,

a small local school instead.

Nixon emerged from this with a burning ambition.

And in six years, he went from nobody

to congressman, senator, and then Vice President.

But Nixon also developed a deep, lifelong resentment

of smooth, privileged, Ivy league elites.

And then he started losing to them.

- Nixon runs for the presidency in 1960

against Nelson Rockefeller and Jack Kennedy,

two wealthy, womanizing, Ivy league graduates

who symbolize everything that Nixon is not.

That first big defeat to Jack Kennedy.

He believes that the election was stolen from him.

You see for the first time this resolution by Nixon

that he's never gonna be out cheated again.

Two years after losing

the presidency to Kennedy...

Nixon attempted a comeback.

Running for Governor of California.

He lost again and he blamed the media.

- But as I leave you, I want you to know...

Just think how much you're gonna be missing.

You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.

And now, seven years later as president,

Richard Nixon finds the same liberal media

blocking his path.

- I have chosen a plan for peace.

I believe it will succeed.

If it does not succeed...

what the critics say now won't matter.

Or if it does succeed,

what the critics say now won't matter.

- There was, in this speech, no new initiative,

no new proposal,

no announcement of any more troop withdrawals,

and, in short, Mr. Nixon has taken a hard line,

not only against the North Vietnamese,

but also against those in this country who oppose his policy.

- The president tonight perhaps has polarized attitude

in the country more than it ever has been

into groups who are either for him or who are against him.

The media's response

infuriated the Nixon White House

and so Patrick Buchanan,

Nixon's populist speech writer and strategist,

persuaded Nixon to go on the offensive.

- And so that's when I wrote him a memo saying,

"You know, we're gonna have to counterattack the media

"and I'll write a speech for Agnew which goes

directly after the networks the first time."

That is the beginning of the wars against the media

that exists to this day.

- Tonight I want to discuss the importance

of the television medium to the American people.

Nowhere in our system are there fewer checks

on such vast power.

Perhaps the place to start looking...

for a credibility gap is not in the offices

of the government in Washington

but in the studios of the networks in New York.

In private, but only in private,

Nixon was more specific about who he blamed.

- "Newsweek" is owned by Jews and dominated by them.

"New York Times," "The Washington Post,"

totally Jewish.

All three networks,

except for the front men, Brinkley or Cronkite,

but the writers are Jewish.

Does this mean all Jews are bad?

No.

It does mean...

most Jews are left wing.

And they're for peace at any price

except where Israel is concerned.

Now, however, in the media we confront a solid block.

It doesn't have anything to do with anti-Semitism.

It happens though.

- And they're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff.

This stranglehold has got to be broken

or this country's gonna go down the drain.

- You believe that? - Oh, yes, sir.

- So do I.

I could never say it though.

- No but if you're elected a second time

you might be able to do something.

The Pentagon Papers had everything

to infuriate Nixon.

They were published a year before Nixon faced re-election

and they were the result of an antiwar, Harvard-educated,

East Coast Jew leaking secrets

to "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post."

And then, the Supreme Court let them get away with it.

- The United States Supreme Court, today,

ruled against the government

and gave "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post"

the right to resume publishing the secret Pentagon study

on United States involvement in the war in Vietnam.

- You see Richard Nixon getting more and more angry

and more and more upset and he cracks.

- I need a son of a bitch like Huston,

who will work his butt off

and do it dishonorably.

And we'll know what he's doing.

I'll direct him myself.

I know how to play this game.

We're gonna start playing it.

I want someone as tough as I am for a change.

Do you think, for Christ's sakes,

"The New York Times" is worried about all the legal niceties?

Those sons of bitches are killing me.

We're up against...

an enemy.

A conspiracy.

They're using any means.

We are going to use any means.

Did you get the Brookings Institute raided last night?

- No. - No? Get it done.

I want the Brookings safe cleaned out.

male narrator: Nixon often vented his frustrations

to his staff, as Morton Halperin had seen

while working for Kissinger.

- I was... often worked very late,

and I would be in Kissinger's office

and Haig would be there,

who was Kissinger's then military assistant,

and almost always the phone would ring

and Kissinger would answer it

and Haig would get on another line

and it would be the president

calling and ranting and raving

about something or somebody

and it would go on for a very long period of time,

and Haig would then announce that...

the president was out of control again

and often suggest that he had, once again, been drinking.

- Fine. How many if we take out the dikes?

Will that drown people? - About 200,000 people.

- No, no, no. I'd rather use a nuclear bomb.

- That, I think, would just be too much.

- I just want you to think big, Henry.

For Christ's sakes.

- Nixon was prone to these explosions.

He sends a memo to Haldeman and Ehrlichman and he says,

"I'm gonna be issuing orders sometimes

"that you guys are not gonna think are wise

"and you're gonna decide that you don't want to obey them.

"That's okay.

"I recognize this in me.

"Just tell me so I know which of the orders are carried out

and which ones are not."

When you're talking about the President

of the United States this is incredibly dangerous

because eventually you're gonna get somebody,

like Charles Colson, who joins the administration

in the fall of 1969

and wants to worm his way into Nixon's good graces.

- I've never walked over my grandmother

if that's what you're asking.

Chuck Colson was a ruthless,

ambitious young lawyer who quickly became

Nixon's favorite hatchet man.

In part because Colson was willing to do

just about anything.

And one of the first to learn that

was another young lawyer named John Dean.

In 1969, Dean had joined the Justice Department.

Dealing with the antiwar movement

and John Mitchell's

hard-line drug policies

including making possession

of marijuana a felony.

But in 1970,

after John Ehrlichman became

domestic policy advisor,

John Dean joined the White House staff

as the new counsel to the president

and Chuck Colson soon gave him

a taste of things to come.

- First time I get something that's really serious

is when Jack Caulfield walks in my office, wide-eyed,

and said that, "I have just come from Chuck Colson's office

who's ordered me to firebomb the Brookings Institute."

I said, "What?"

He said, "He wants me to firebomb

"the Brookings Institute.

"When the fire department responds,

he wants me to send a team of burglars in to break the safe."

I got on the next courier flight to California

and went to visit Ehrlichman in San Clemente

'cause I wasn't gonna let him off on this one.

I had opened the code before I left.

I saw that it was probably a capital offense

if anybody died as a result of arson

in the District of Columbia.

And so I was not gonna have a phone call

where he would brush me off.

I was going out there for an eyeball to eyeball

to tell him this was insane, it was criminal,

and it was certainly not conduct

that should be even contemplated

in the White House.

And he heard me out.

He picked up the phone, got Colson on the line, said,

"Chuck, young counsel, Dean, is out here with me.

"He's learned about the Brookings operation,

"does not think it's a good idea, cancel it."

Puts down the phone. Hangs it up.

"Anything else, Counselor?"

I said, "No, John, thank you." And left.

- So, Ehrlichman already knew about it?

- Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

- It was war and it should be fought anyway...

that you can fight it.

I talked to Nixon enough. He believed...

his phone was tapped. His wife was followed...

all of these things. Which were not true.

Infuriated by leaks to the media,

Nixon orders Ehrlichman to create

a secret White House organization

to identify leakers and attack them.

Starting with Daniel Ellsberg.

- Nixon calls this team that he sets up,

"The Special Investigations Unit."

They call themselves the "Plumbers."

Break-in, plant bugs,

rifle files, infiltrate.

- Gordon Liddy is part of the "Plumbers" Unit.

He's a screwball. He's a nutcase.

He's a bumbler. He's a romantic.

He is somebody who thought he was James Bond.

He'd come up with a plan to break-in

to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office.

Liddy and these Cuban Americans,

he's been able to arrange

to help him

through another White House aide, Howard Hunt.

They broke in. They find nothing in the files.

They trash the place.

- We had one little operation

it's been aborted in Los Angeles,

which I think it's better you don't know about.

- They realize they gotta get Liddy

and Hunt out of the White House.

- And in classic Washington bureaucratic fashion

they're promoted to be somebody else's problem

and they're sent over to

the Committee to RE-Elect the President, to CREEP.

narrator: CREEP, which stood for

the Committee to RE-Elect the President,

was the organization created to manage

Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign.

And Gordon Liddy wanted to control

CREEP's intelligence operation.

And so, in January, 1972, John Dean gets a call

from Jeb Magruder, the Acting Director of CREEP,

inviting Dean to a meeting at John Mitchell's office.

Officially, Mitchell is still Attorney General

but he's actually already managing

Nixon's re-election campaign.

- Magruder calls me,

would I come over to the meeting

where Liddy presents his intelligence plans.

And it's one of the more amazing meetings

I was ever in, in government.

Liddy started talking about kidnapping antiwar leaders.

He said, "I have some men who will take these people

"off the street, take them below the Mexican border,

"drug them, and put them out of commission

during the campaign."

Mitchell ended it and he said,

"Gordon, I'm more interested in a plan

where we can track the antiwar movement."

A week or so later, I get a call from Magruder and said,

"Liddy is presenting his revised intelligence plan."

I just went right up to Mitchell's office

and they were talking about wiretapping.

So I said, very loudly, just to throw cold water

on the meeting,

that I didn't think these were the sort of things

that should ever be discussed in the office

of the Attorney General of the United States.

Dean's comment ended the meeting

but not Liddy's planning.

And soon afterwards,

Mitchell resigned as Attorney General

in order to run Nixon's re-election campaign

full time.

- Liddy doesn't give up.

And that's what Magruder

will later tell me.

Got him to go down with the plan in hand

and get Mitchell to approve it.

One of Liddy's first actions

was to bug the Democratic National Committee

but the results weren't impressive

so he went back in and he blew it.

- Five people have been arrested

and charged with breaking into the headquarters

of the Democratic National Committee

in the middle of the night.

- The Democratic National Committee is housed

in the fashionable Watergate complex.

The break-in apparently planned well in advance.

- Police confiscated extensive photographic

and electronic eavesdropping gear

as well as several thousand dollars

in consecutively numbered bills.

- Each had several aliases.

Four said they were from Miami.

The fifth said he lived

in the metropolitan Washington area.

Three were originally from Cuba.

The story attracted the interest

of two young, ambitious reporters.

- I had come in to the office and I saw this commotion

over on the city desk and it was about...

this break-in that occurred at

the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate.

So I said to the city editor, "Hey, I know some people

over at the Watergate, maybe I'll make some phone checks."

- The morning of June 17th was one of those

glorious, beautiful days in Washington.

Saturday.

The editors said,

"Well, we've got this burglary at...

"the Democratic headquarters. Who would be dumb enough

to come in on such a beautiful day?"

and they immediately thought of me.

- In 1972, I was 28

and I'd been working for 12 years in the business.

I actually was, I think, the first reporter

to be hired without a college degree.

- I was a Republican. Registered Republican.

I was in the Navy in '68 and I voted for Nixon...

because I believed he would

get us out of the Vietnam War.

I saw some of it from a ship off the coast of Vietnam

and I felt the Vietnam War was a giant mistake and waste.

I'd been at "The Post" nine months

and was the night police reporter

which meant working from 6:30 at night

to 2:30 in the morning.

- I didn't know Woodward well at all.

Didn't really take very well to him

from what I had seen of him at the paper.

- Oh, how come? - He was, uh...

Well, there were a group of us actually that sort of thought

that Woodward had come in and moved very fast

by kind of brown-nosing the management a little bit.

- It was tense.

- But we were very complimentary

because we had this kind of good cop, bad cop routine

that Woodward and I would do every day.

- I was a young journalist and I was hired by CBS

and put in the Washington bureau.

So there was this break-in at the Watergate

at the Democratic National Committee

but no one thought... no one thought

it was anything more than a local burglary

and I walked into the courtroom.

There was only one other reporter there

and it was Bob Woodward.

- They had sent me to the court house.

I sat in the front row when the five Watergate burglars

were arraigned

and the judge asked the lead burglar,

James McCord, "Where did you work?"

And James McCord said... "CIA."

Judge said, "Speak up."

And McCord finally said, "CIA."

And my reaction was...

Holy shit.

- The story went on page one and that was the beginning.

My aide, Ken Khachigian, called me and he said

they caught five guys in the Watergate office complex.

And my heart sank...

because I...

knew, not with hard knowledge but just the way you know,

our guys were involved.

But that's not what Mr. Buchanan said in public.

- There is no White House knowledge

of the Watergate incident.

There's been no White House connection with it.

Secondly, the American people have

a relatively high tolerance level

for the kind of bizarre,

political episodes of which this is one.

narrator: CREEP and the White House

pretended they didn't care

about the Watergate arrests

but actually they were terrified.

Hugh Sloan was the Treasurer of CREEP.

- I came to work on June 17th.

Evidently, the burglary had happened in the early morning

and Mr. Liddy passed me in the hall, rather frantic,

and said to me that, "I made a terrible mistake.

"I'm gonna lose my job.

I used someone from here which I told them I wouldn't do."

- This is a police photograph of James W. McCord.

McCord is a former CIA employee

and guess what else he is?

A consultant to President Richard Nixon's

re-election campaign committee.

Paul Magallanes,

a young, Spanish-speaking FBI agent,

was assigned to interview the burglars.

- I went there and I interviewed the Cubans.

You know, "What happened here?"

And they kept responding to me,

in Spanish, this was all in Spanish,

"Paul, you know."

He says, "We're working for the same man."

I said, "What are you talking about,

working for the same man?"

He says, "Yeah."

He says, "We're working for the president.

You're working for the president."

And he says, "Everything will be all right.

You know, we're gonna be taken care of."

The burglars were taken care of

as part of a huge cover-up operation

run by CREEP and the White House.

Involving payoffs, political pressure,

destruction of evidence, and lying to the FBI.

It was all coordinated by John Dean.

Although Dean had initially opposed

the White House's crazier schemes,

managing the Watergate cover-up

was both a job requirement

and a major career opportunity.

- Liddy tells me,

"I need money to get these guys out of jail

because of their earlier exploits."

But he said, "John, something you should know and take back

"to your superiors is that two of the men I used

"in the Watergate operation,

"I used earlier in an operation

that was authorized by the White House."

And this had to do with the break-in

at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office

which was an eye opener to me. I didn't know about this.

So this thing suddenly

brings these two events together.

- There were these entries in the address books

of two of the burglars.

"W House - H. Hunt." Or Howard Hunt.

Just called the White House and asked for Howard Hunt.

The operator said, "I think he's in Mr. Colson's office."

I eventually got Hunt on the phone

and asked why his name was in the address books

of two of the people arrested at the Democratic headquarters

and he shouted out, "Good God."

Slammed down the phone and left town.

- I was worried that we might be libeling Hunt

because I didn't know what he did.

So I called Mark Felt

who was at the FBI.

I had met him when I worked as courier for the Pentagon

going to the White House.

And Felt said, "Don't worry. Hunt's deeply involved."

Carl and myself called Mark Felt "Deep Throat."

- The reason Deep Throat is important,

one, is we knew we were right.

He confirmed information that we had obtained elsewhere.

So we knew we were right.

- Deep Throat happened to be the number two man

at the FBI, Mark Felt,

and one of his primary motivations,

if not the primary motivation,

was that he had been passed over

by Nixon and Haldeman when they picked Patrick Gray

to be Director of the FBI.

And so here was a classic case of a Washington bureaucrat

leaking to damage the guy above him

who got the job he wanted.

- "The Washington Post" reported today

that Hunt's name was found in the address books

of two of the five men arrested in the incident.

Hunt's immediate supervisor, White House Special Counsel,

Charles Colson, denies any knowledge of the incident.

A few weeks later,

the FBI arrested Hunt and Liddy,

but they stopped there.

The cover-up prevented further arrests

and FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray,

didn't like leaks either.

- We're called at home on a Friday night,

"Be in the Washington field office

"at 8:00, 8:15 Saturday morning.

Be in your best suit. Be ready to see the director."

And as we go into the meeting room,

out comes Gray and he launches into a bizarre rant.

"I want the agent or agents who leaked this information

to take one step forward."

And now we're all...

"Whoa, what is this?"

You could forgive Gray for being tense.

He knew he was sitting on a powder keg

and that the Nixon White House wanted him to play nice.

Only a week after the burglary,

Nixon and Haldeman had tried using the CIA

to shut down the FBI investigation.

Nixon chose Vernon Walters, the Deputy Director of the CIA

to deliver a message to Gray.

- Now, on the Democratic break-in,

we're back in the problem area.

Because the FBI is not under control.

Because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them.

John Dean concurs now with Mitchell's recommendation

that the only way to solve this is to have Walters call Gray

and just say, "Stay the hell out of this.

We don't want you to go any further on it."

And that's not unusual.

- Pat Gray doesn't want to control them?

- Pat does want to. He doesn't know how to

and he doesn't have any basis for doing it.

And that will fit rather well

because the agents working the case

feel that this is CIA.

- But they've...

traced the money. - They've traced a name

but they haven't gotten to the guy yet.

Now it's directly traceable.

And there's more.

We're relying on more and more people all the time.

That's a problem.

They'll stop if we take this other way.

- Right. Fine.

- And they say the only way to do that...

is from White House instructions.

It's gotta be Helms and uh, what's his name?

- Walters.

- The proposal would be that Ehrlichman and I call him.

- All right, fine.

How do you... well...

we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things.

- Well, that's what Ehrlichman says.

The FBI interviewed Colson yesterday.

The FBI guys working the case had concluded it was either

a White House operation or it was...

- Cuban thing.

- Cubans and the CIA.

And after their interrogation of Colson yesterday

they concluded it was not the White House

but are now convinced it's the CIA.

So the CIA turn off would... - Good.

Play it tough.

That's the way they play it, that's the way

we're gonna play it. - Okay, then we'll do that.

- Just say, it was aomedy of errors...

and they should call the FBI in

and say that, for the country,

don't go any further into this one.

Period.

Tell them, lay off.

- Yeah, that's the basis we do it on.

- I don't want them to get any ideas

that we're doing it because our concern is political.