Original subtitles

- 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.

- I want it implemented on a thievery basis.

Goddammit, get in and get those files.

We are going to use any means.

male narrator: Within a week after the Watergate arrests,

Woodward and Bernstein already realized that Watergate

was no ordinary burglary, and they started digging.

- We couldn't find out who worked

for the re-election committee.

It was like, uh, top secret.

Really you knew John Mitchell

was the chairman, you knew a couple other names,

but beyond that you couldn't find out.

- Carl got the, uh, list of people who worked there,

and we couldn't call them at their offices.

- We started visitingth,

in their homes.

- Bob and I were good friends.

I know how hard he worked on it.

He worked on it all the time.

He--He worked on it at night. He knocked on doors at night.

It was 24/7 for both Carl and Bob,

and he kept telling me over and over,

"Do not let them take this story away from you.

Hold onto this story."

Nine days after the Watergate arrests,

White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman was nervous

about whether the cover-up would hold,

particularly for John Mitchell.

But Nixon was truly loyal to Mitchell,

and refused to make him the fall guy.

- So Mitchell pulls out.

So he's still the former Attorney General

and the former campaign manager.

They're not gonna let up on him just because

he isn't the manager now.

The only way you can do that is to hang him on it and say,

"Well, yeah, he did it.

That's why we have to get rid of him."

- I can't do that to him. I'd rather shit.

Lose the election.

- You can't do that.

He won't let you do that. He'll pull the plug on himself.

- No, no.

He was supposed to do everything he could

to find out what was going on.

- Apparently with our limited resources,

they use the same people for a wide range of things.

So you got cross ties.

If these guys were only on this thing,

you could cut them loose and sink them without a trace.

Tying these people to those and this,

that is a problem because it shows they were political.

- Yeah.

You're right.

- John Mitchell resigned today as the head

of President Nixon's re-election campaign committee.

- Some Democrats maintain that the burglary

of their headquarters carried out by, among others,

a member of Mitchell's staff may have been a factor.

Most White House and CREEP officials

went along with the cover-up,

and just to make sure, whenever they were questioned

by the FBI, a White House lawyer would be watching.

- I was assigned to interview Jeb Magruder.

This was at the White House,

the White House attorney in back of me,

and started interviewing him.

"No, I don't have any information.

I don't know anything about this."

And then he starts dribbling out some stuff.

I'm taking notes, and all of the sudden,

I felt something in back of me.

Here was the White House lawyer.

He's going like this, looking at my notes.

I said, "Well, Mr. Magruder, if you don't tell me now

"what your involvement was or is in this case,

you're gonna have to tell the Grand Jury."

I said, "Save yourself the trip."

But he wouldn't do it.

- You could tell that he was lying?

- Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

- Mr. Magruder took me to lunch and, uh, said,

"You know, the amount of money we authorized for Gordon Liddy

"is a problem.

"We can't tell people that it was that much.

So you and I need to tell them a different number."

And, uh, I was a little shocked by this,

so I said, "Well, Jeb, I have no intention

of perjuring myself."

And he said, "You may have to."

But Hugh Sloan was an honest man,

and when CREEP pressured him to lie,

he resigned instead.

And soon afterwards, Woodward and Bernstein found him.

- A lot of doors were slammed in our faces,

but very quickly I found myself on the doorstep

of the person called The Bookkeeper.

It turned out that The Bookkeeper was the assistant

to the treasurer of the Committee for the Re-Election

of the President-- a man named Hugh Sloan.

- They were young guys just starting out,

and they made the appeal,

"Okay, you can't talk to us publicly,

"but let's talk about-- can't you help us understand

how a campaign works? Can't we talk on background?"

Um, uh, that type of approach. And they were quite good at it.

- He started, uh, explaining that there were these large

disbursements to people like Gordon Liddy

and that there was this secret cash fund and there were

five people who had control of it.

It turned out that John Mitchell was one of the people

who could authorize disbursements of that fund.

- The Watergate bugging had been funded with knowledge

of the campaign manager while he was

the chief law enforcement officer of the country.

I had a number for Mitchell.

And I got him on the phone and I said,

"Mr. Mitchell, there's a story in tomorrow's paper

"I wanna read to you what Bob Woodward and myself

have written and get your response."

And I got as far as, "John N. Mitchell,

"while Attorney General of the United States,

had controlled a secret fund."

And Mr. Mitchell said, "Jeessuuss." Just like that.

Got to the end of the first paragraph,

and Mitchell said, "Jesus Christ,

"all that crap, you're putting it in the paper?

"It's already been denied.

"If you print that, Katie Graham's gonna

get her tit caught in a big fat wringer."

And there was a pause, and then he said,

"And when this campaign is over,

we're gonna do a little story on you two boys."

And he hung the phone up.

Now, I can tell you that to this day,

it's the most chilling moment I think I've ever had

as a reporter because he meant it.

But Bernstein didn't back off,

and crucially, neither did Ben Bradlee,

"The Washington Post's" editor,

or Katharine Graham, the "Post's" owner and publisher.

- So I called Ben Bradlee up

after this conversation with Mitchell,

and I told him what Mitchell had said.

And Bradlee said, "He really said that?

Do you have good notes?" And I said, "Yeah."

I read him back my notes.

And he said, "Put it all in the paper,

but leave her tit out."

And that's exactly what Bernstein did.

- The next morning Mrs. Graham came down at my desk and said,

"Carl, do you have any more messages for me?"

Woodward, Bernstein, and the "Post" kept pushing,

seemingly without interference,

but unknown to them, Nixon and the White House

were already plotting to cripple them.

- What are you gonna do about "The Washington Post"?

- Well, we can't do a thing before the election.

The White House has gotta do something.

What do you think? - Well, you buy the stock.

- Well, she's got two classes of stock.

70% of the voting powers are in stock she alone holds.

- Can't you screw her on a television license?

- Oh, yes. - How?

- Just not renew it.

It has to come up for renewal every three years.

- How do we-- How do we do that?

- You put a group together as a way to get at her.

Nixon's new Attorney General Richard Kleindienst

made sure that the FBI and the prosecutors limited

their investigation to the burglars, Hunt, and Liddy.

Kleindienst and his deputy, Henry Petersen,

also told the White House

everything the investigators did.

- It's Henry Petersen,

the head of the criminal division,

who's right on top of the investigation

and filling me in with everything that's happening

in the investigation--not only FBI but the Grand Jury.

- Seven people were indicted today, the five who were

caught by the police along with two others,

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt,

a former consultant for the White House.

- It was likewise the most thorough comprehensive

Grand Jury presentation that has ever been made.

There was no stone that was left unturned.

There was no lead or possible witness

that wasn't followed up.

- Sources here at the Justice Department say

the investigation by both the FBI and the Grand Jury is over.

There is no evidence, they insist,

that anyone else was involved.

- Later that day, Nixon summoned John Dean

to the Oval Office.

The 1972 election was still 54 days away,

but Nixon was pleased with the cover-up.

In fact, he was already planning more attacks

on enemies including "The Washington Post"

and its attorney, Edward Bennett Williams.

- Three months ago I would have had difficulty

predicting where we'd be today.

I think I can say that 54 days from now that not a thing

will come crashing down.

- Well, the whole thing is a can of worms.

A lot of this stuff went on, but the way you've handled it.

Seems to me has been very skillful.

Putting your fingers in the dikes

every time that leaks have sprung.

Don't worry.

I wouldn't wanna be on the other side right now.

I wouldn't wanna be in Edward Bennett Williams' position

after this election.

- No, no.

- Because afterwards, that's the guy.

- We're going after him. - That's the guy we gotta ruin.

- He's an attorney for "The Washington Post."

I think we're gonna fix this son of a bitch.

We've got to. - Absolutely.

Well, along that line,

one of the things I've tried to do is keep notes

on people who are less than our friends.

- I want the most comprehensive notes on all of those

that have tried to do us in.

We haven't used the power in the first four years.

We haven't used the Bureau.

We haven't used the Justice Department.

But things are gonna change now.

- That's an exciting prospect.

- Nixon administration officials

would take reporters aside and say,

"I hope you're not buying this Watergate bullshit.

You know, the 'Post' is way out on a limb here."

- I don't respect the type of journalism,

the shabby journalism that is being practiced

by "The Washington Post."

- At CBS News, in the beginning,

alone among the television networks, took the attitude,

we should take it to air with full credit and say,

"In today's news, worth noting

'The Washington Post' is reporting thus and such."

There were back-channel calls to William S. Paley

who basically owned the company,

was a Republican, had been a big Nixon supporter,

pressure on him to shut these news guys up.

And to his everlasting credit, for the most part,

he stonewalled them.

- The White House--I believe it was Charles Colson--

called Paley and squeezed Mr. Paley, who turned around

and squeezed the news division.

Now, it was pretty bold and, uh, courageous of

the then-President of CBS News to stand up to Mr. Paley.

- The pressure was on.

High White House officials came to, one case,

the Bureau Chief, and another case,

to the head of the news division,

suggesting that I be relieved as White House

Chief Correspondent.

In fact John Ehrlichman once said

to the President of the News Division,

"Maybe you could send this guy Rather back to Texas."

- They targeted Dan. Dan became the bête noire.

One of the--there's-- Nixon had an enemies list,

and then there was Dan Rather.

He was Enemy Number One.

I think one of the reasons that I admire Dan so much

is that I did know he was coming under pressure,

and he stood up to it.

He didn't withdraw.

He didn't change what he wanted to say

night after night on the White House lawn.

- I can remember coming home to my wife and I told her,

"You know, it's one of those times in life professionally

"both CBS News and we--

"our little selves here, our family--

we've got everything on the line."

If any or all of what is alleged to have been going on

is true, how high up in the White House does it go?

And is the President himself involved?

On September 28, 1972,

Carl Bernstein got a phone call that led him

to a lawyer and low-level government official

named Donald Segretti.

- I was in the office.

I get this call from somebody who says he has a friend

who had been approached in a rather strange way

to go to work for the Nixon Re-election Committee

to try and maybe do some dirty tricks.

And I was given the guy's name, which was Alex Shipley.

And he told me this story of how he and others

had been approached by a guy named Donald Segretti,

who said he was working on behalf of the Nixon campaign

to try to sabotage campaign events.

We have this name Segretti.

We got his credit card records and his telephone records and--

- How'd you do that?

Uh, I--I had a source at the telephone company

and, uh--and, uh-- I can't remember how.

Maybe Bob got the American Express records.

Maybe I did. I can't remember.

- That couldn't happen these days.

- It'd be pretty tough.

I don't know, maybe yes, maybe no.

- Segretti flew cross-country to more than 17 states

setting up a nationwide network of spies and saboteurs.

He recruited more than 50 operatives

who helped him pull his pranks,

some benign, others clear violations of law.

- Reports by "The Washington Post" and "Time Magazine"

name the President's appointment secretary

Dwight Chapin as a contact man for the operation.

The other named by the "Post" is Herbert Kalmbach,

the President's personal lawyer.

- What's the situation on Segretti?

- Segretti, just so you know, is incommunicado.

But he calls John Dean from a public phone

and calls on to a line that's not traceable

every day around noon.

Well, this is why we got the man we got.

We get him paid outside, get him completely away

from the place.

- I just think we gotta brazen it through.

Meanwhile, Kalmbach, what's he have to say?

- Kalmbach doesn't have to say a goddamn thing.

- I know that.

It's a question whether...

If the lawyer for the President is involved in putting up

the money, that's a bad story.

- Right.

- Has anybody talked to Segretti--Don Segretti--

to find out whether such an espionage squad existed?

- Well, uh, I really don't know.

- In the Justice Department? - As far as I--

- Don't you think-- Should they?

- Well, I don't know if they should or not.

When Woodward and Bernstein dug into Segretti's

dirty tricks operation, they quickly realized

that it was just one part of something much larger.

- Finally Watergate made sense,

that this break-in was not an isolated incident,

but it was part of a vast campaign of political espionage

and sabotage to undermine the Democrats

and the election itself.

- This was an effort to say, "We're gonna pick who Nixon

runs against to make sure he wins."

- It worked.

I think people who worked in the campaign will tell you

that it worked.

Nixon's efforts to sabotage the election

had started a year earlier.

First Colson, Dean, Haldeman, and others created lists

of opponents and discussed how to attack them.

For example in this 1971 memo by John Dean.

Then Nixon, thinking ahead to the election,

started to focus on potential Democratic opponents,

especially the Democratic frontrunner,

Maine senator Edmund Muskie.

- John, we have the power, but are we using it

to investigate, you know, contributors to, uh,

Humphrey, Muskie, the Jews who are stealing?

- I don't know.

- We have a new man over there.

- You mean at IRS? - Yeah.

In tax returns.

Are we looking into Muskie's return?

- No, we haven't.

- Teddy Kennedy? The Kennedys?

Shouldn't they be investigated?

- IRS-wise, I don't know.

Teddy, we are covering personally.

- And what about Muskie?

This wasn't just another one of Nixon's rants.

Again and again over the following months,

Nixon pressured his staff to attack the Democrats.

- Now, here's the point.

Bob...

Please get me the names of the Jews.

Big Jewish contributors to the Democrats.

Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?

The IRS is going after Billy Graham.

I just don't know whether we're being as rough.

- I've often been asked what it feels like

to be the frontrunner.

Well, the one sensation that I feel most of all

almost every day is a twitching between my shoulder blades.

Because I know I'm the target.

Muskie had no idea how right he was.

By early 1972, the White House,

CREEP, and Donald Segretti were mounting numerous

and increasingly serious covert operations against him.

- They had Muskie's chauffeur on the payroll.

One of his jobs was to take documents from Muskie's

Senate office to Muskie's campaign headquarters.

The chauffeur was paid by the Nixon campaign

to make copies of those documents,

and so the Nixon campaign had total transparency

of what Muskie was doing.

Strategy memos, the schedule, copies of everything.

Newspapers started publishing stories

that attacked his wife.

I think they rattled Muskie.

Uh, one of the operations was this Canuck letter.

Since his earliest campaigns,

Nixon had used smear tactics.

But in 1972, he also used what we now call fake news,

and he used it very effectively.

- Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie today denounced

William Loeb, the conservative publisher

of the Manchester "New Hampshire Union Leader,"

as a liar and a gutless coward.

What infuriated Muskie was Loeb's publication yesterday

of a letter from a man in Florida who claimed he had

overheard Muskie laugh at the use of the word "Canuck,"

a reference to Americans of French descent.

Both the attacks on Muskie's wife

and the Canuck letter were fake,

but their effects were very real.

- First to say to Mr. Loeb,

who's the publisher of this paper,

that he has lied about me.

By attacking me, by attacking my wife,

he has proved himself to be a gutless coward.

- Talking more about the incident,

he suddenly became emotional and found it

difficult to continue.

- Maybe I said all I should on it.

It's fortunate for him he's not on this platform beside me.

A good woman...

- He got very emotional and he cried.

And a lot of people thought that that was pivotal

in the downfall of Muskie.

- Muskie had a psychological collapse.

- On television we watched Edmund Muskie

choking back tears.

Emotional display carries a connotation

of incomplete self-control.

Not a good impression

for a potential chief executive to create.

Muskie was forced to drop out of the race in April.

And in July the Democrats nominated liberal senator

George McGovern as their candidate to oppose Nixon.

- The senator from South Dakota and the next President

of the United States, George McGovern.

- One of Nixon's key aides, Pat Buchanan,

thought it was just great they got George McGovern

to run against, who was much more, uh, left wing.

- I was doing then at Nixon's request the in-depth analysis

of his potential adversaries in '72,

foremost among which was Muskie,

and I'd already done the analysis of Muskie.

And I didn't do McGovern because I said in a memo,

uh, "We have not been-- lived so good a life

"that divine providence is gonna reward us

with George McGovern as an opponent."

But divine providence

had nothing to do with it,

and the White House didn't stop,

even after they had knocked Muskie out of the race.

- George McGovern replaced Muskie as the likely

Presidential candidate.

They attempted to break into McGovern headquarters

several times and--to bug McGovern headquarters,

and failed there as well.

- This is a story that I think is not yet well known

in many parts of the country.

But the evidence is very strong that at least 50 people

and perhaps more than that have been hired to do some

of the shabbiest undercover operations in the history

of American politics.

- And I remember the thing that surprised me most

was all of this important information was coming out

and it seemed to have no impact on the public.

This was no accident.

For years, Nixon had been preparing a brilliant strategy

that combined election year politics

and global diplomacy.

It succeeded and it also totally overwhelmed

media coverage of Watergate.

Ironically, some of Nixon's motives and goals

were deeply idealistic.

- We're in a situation at the present time.

It will be the last time the United States

can create conditions which can lead to peace

for perhaps 25 years.

The problem we have with the Russians and the Chinese,

they believe in one thing, we believe in another.

But if you start talks with that in mind,

there is a chance you can find areas where you live

and let live.

The only thing I would give to the other side

is that any man, no matter how savage,

probably does think of young people.

The kids.

And they know as we know, that in war,

it would be mass incineration.

But however noble his goals,

Nixon's strategy and timing were ruthlessly political,

with every major action planned for the election year.

Step one, in February 1972, the opening to communist China

complete with panda bears, table tennis matches,

and state visits.

- First American President ever to do so

steps onto Chinese soil.

- Once Nixon opened dialogue with China,

he moved to step two:

using his new relationship with China as leverage

to get a nuclear weapons treaty with the Soviet Union.

- These agreements mean a first step in reducing the danger

of war in the world

and increasing the chances of peace.

But the crown jewel

of Nixon's strategy was Vietnam.

Nixon intensified the bombing of Vietnam so he could

start withdrawing troops, timed perfectly

for the 1972 election.

- The President has decided to continue our withdrawal

program to an authorized level of 27,000

by December 1st, 1972.

The troop withdrawals reduced

not only U.S. casualties but also draft levels,

enabling Nixon to announce an end to the draft.

This was enormously popular with 18- and 19-year-olds

reaching draft age, so Nixon also announced

that he would lower the voting age from 21 to 18.

- President Nixon is making a strong bid for the support

of the 11 million young voters who will be casting

their first ballots in November.

The final touch would be

a Vietnam peace agreement.

Nixon and Kissinger needed to time it so that the agreement

would be announced before the election,

but that South Vietnam wouldn't collapse until after.

So that the doves couldn't accuse them of having

prolonged the war for nothing.

- The real question is whether we settle at a cost

of destroying the South Vietnamese.

The advantage to settle now is you ensure

a hell of a landslide.

You'd have a mandate.

- The question is, how can we maneuver so it will

look like a settlement by election day?

If we can get that, then we can screw them

after election day if necessary.

And this...

This I think could finish the destruction of McGovern.

- Oh, yes.

I'm just not sure the South can survive in any event.

The Northerners have more stamina.

How the hell they've taken what they have,

I don't know.

- The doves should not be able to say in October that what you

did they would have done in '69 and saved 20,000 lives.

- Yeah.

Nixon's strategy worked.

The North Vietnamese went along

with Kissinger's proposal, betting correctly that once

the Americans were gone, the North Vietnamese

and Viet Cong could easily conquer South Vietnam.

And so just ten days before the 1972 election,

Henry Kissinger called a press conference that guaranteed

Nixon's landslide victory.

- We believe that peace is at hand.

We believe that by far the longest part of the road

has been traversed.

Two years after America's withdrawal,

South Vietnam collapsed.

But in 1972, the agreement made Nixon unbeatable.

Nothing else mattered. Certainly not Watergate.

- The President leads McGovern by 26 points in the Gallup.

- President Nixon is well on the way toward the predicted

landslide re-election.

- Well, in Washington, President Nixon's number one

domestic affairs advisor is John Ehrlichman,

and David Schoumacher is with him now.

- Uh, Howard, he feels too good.

I'm gonna ask him whatever happened to Watergate.

- I don't know. I don't know.

Apparently nothing.

But while the cover-up

had temporarily kept the lid on,

Watergate just wouldn't go away.

There had already been rumors of payoffs

to the Watergate burglars and suddenly they weren't just

rumors anymore.

- On the 8th of December, this plane crashed

near Chicago's Midway Airport.

One of those who died in the crash was the wife

of E. Howard Hunt.

In Mrs. Hunt's purse, 100 hundred dollar bills

were found and there has been subsequent testimony

that the cash may have been hush money

supplied by the Committee to Reelect the President.

- Do they have any reading yet on the traceability

of the $10,000? - Uh, no.

Uh, Dean spent most of the weekend on that.

Uh, the bills are still in the hands of the Chicago police

to be turned over to Hunt today,

so until then John doesn't know whether

it's traceable money or not.

He doesn't think it is.

- If something could just be said.

- The problem is exactly that.

Uh, if you reopen it, you raise more questions

than you answer and you bring the thing back up

to public attention.

The thing that bothers me is Segretti and the other stuff

like that tends to be tied to Watergate.

- Well, let's face it.

We all know who should have handled this.

Goddammit, it was Mitchell.

And he wasn't handling it.

- Now, there is a way to do this,

and that is to dump Mitchell on this thing and say, uh--

- I dump him, it would kill him financially.

Mitchell has a serious problem with his wife.

He was unable to watch the campaign,

and as a result, the underlings did things

without his knowledge.

- And that really dumps on Magruder.

- The minute you dump on Mitchell

by saying he didn't watch the underlings,

the underlings are gonna produce their diaries

and show that Mitchell was in 18 meetings where this was

discussed, approved, authorized, financed.

Still tense about Watergate

but also emboldened by Nixon's re-election,

the White House intensified

its pressure on "The Washington Post."

- Right after the election, the pressure got very,

very tough.

The real threat was the challenge to our television

station licenses which were up for renewal in Florida.

Almost all of them were

obviously politically motivated

mostly by Committee to Reelect the President people.

- "A group headed by President Nixon's Florida fundraiser

"announced Tuesday that it will file a rival application

"for the license of the television station WJXT,

now held by a syndicate of the Washington Post Company."

- Isn't that too bad?

- "Post" will spend a fortune.

- The only thing that was unfortunate on Watergate

was Segretti.

Haldeman slipped there.

That kind of operation should be on the outside.

- But despite enormous pressure,

Katharine Graham and "The Washington Post"

didn't bend an inch.

- I was in the news room and I got a call from the guard

down on 15th Street that there was a guy with a subpoena

for me, Woodward, our notes.

And, uh, should he let him upstairs?

And I said, "No, keep him down there."

And I called Ben Bradlee, the editor.

Bradlee said, "Give me a minute

and I'll call you right back."

Called back about five minutes later and he said,

+"All right, first you get out of the office

for the afternoon."

And I talked to Katharine and she says,

"They're not your notes. They're her notes."

And if anybody's gonna go to jail,

it's gonna be her.

I still--I get choked up talking about it.

Um...

Nixon faced two looming threats.

His first problem was the Senate,

which was still under Democratic control

despite Nixon's landslide victory.

- The Senate tonight voted 77 to nothing

to establish a select committee to investigate

alleged political espionage in last year's election campaign.

That includes the Watergate bugging case.

The committee will be headed by North Carolina Democrat

Sam Ervin.

The second problem Nixon faced

was the burglars trial.

- And now the criminal trial begins

in the rarely-used ceremonial courtroom,

the biggest available.

- At least temporarily, the burglars were under

control through payoffs,

and the prosecutors were controlled by Kleindienst

and the White House.

But there was one man at the trial

who wasn't under control: the judge.

Judge John J. Sirica was a conservative Republican

and a Nixon supporter, but he also believed in the law

and he was about to become a big problem.

- Judge Sirica, boy, he was something.

I think he was a stunningly honest man.

And he was outraged. This isn't right.

This isn't the way things are done.

They've crossed a line.

- I remember talking to Judge Sirica.

We chatted off the record and he said,

"You know, I've got this courtroom case where

"the U.S. Attorney says Gordon Liddy is the mastermind,

"and I have subscription to 'The Washington Post,'

"and I've read all of these stories saying Magruder,

"Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman,

White House involvement and so forth."

He said, "The disconnect is so great."

- The Justice Department, through Petersen

and the prosecutors, became part of the cover-up.

They had a fair amount of the same information

that we were uncovering.

We didn't know that at the time.

But they were ordered to only prosecute

the Watergate burglary itself.

They had the information on Segretti.

We didn't even know it at the time, that they did.

Finally at some point in there we went to them and said,

"Do you know this?"

"Oh, yeah. We know all about that."

a federal judge today made clear that he believes

the whole truth did not emerge in the trial

the Watergate case.

- Sirica disclosed he's given prosecutor Earl Silbert

a secret list of persons, some of them never questioned,

who should be called before the Grand Jury.

Silbert later indicated to CBS News the prosecution

is not planning to renew its investigation.

After the burglars were found guilty,

Sirica threatened them with long prison sentences

unless they agreed to talk.

This gravely endangered the cover-up,

as Nixon immediately realized.

- A minute on Watergate.

What the hell is the strategy now?

The judge, his conduct is shocking.

What's he bucking for? An appointment with the Democrats?

- No, no, Sirica is, uh--is a tough,

hardboiled law-and-order judge.

I know him pretty well.

The only thing I can figure is this case just got under

his craw for some reason.

- After the election, Nixon learns that Haldeman

and Ehrlichman know everything they know basically through me,

so Nixon tells Ehrlichman, "I'm gonna have Dean

report directly to me on Watergate."

- A 35-year sentence? There were no weapons, right?

No injuries? That's just ridiculous.

One of these blacks holds up a store with a goddamn gun,

they give him two years.

Probation after six months.

- And they let him out on bond.

Hunt made the bond. Everybody else is in jail.

- What the hell do they expect?

They expect clemency within a reasonable time?

- I think they do.

- And what would you advise on that?

- It's one of those things we'll have

to watch very closely.

- You couldn't do it, say, in six months?

- No.

This may become so political. - Jesus Christ.

The main thing is the isolation of the President from this.

- Absolutely.

- Because that fortunately is totally true.

- I know that, sir.

- But the committee is after the White House.

Haldeman or Colson, Ehrlichman.

- Or possibly Dean.

John Dean was right to be worried

because the cover-up was starting to fall apart.

The first to name Dean publicly was L. Patrick Gray,

who was forced to testify in the Senate to be confirmed

as permanent director of the FBI.

- Gray has revealed that when the FBI was investigating

the Watergate bugging case, a White House lawyer,

John Dean, sat in on all questioning

of White House officials.

- Kennedy, "Did Gray object to Dean's presence?"

Gray, "He couldn't remember for sure,

"but he would have preferred not to have

the President's counsel there."

- Byrd recalling that Gray testified that FBI agents

asked White House counsel John Dean if Watergate suspect

E. Howard Hunt had an office in the White House,

and that Dean said he would have to check whether or not

Mr. Hunt had an office there and would ascertain that.

Byrd asked, "When was that?" Replied Gray, "June 22nd."

But that, Byrd pointed out, was three days after Dean

had had material from Hunt's office moved

to his own office.

Said Byrd, "He lied to the agent, didn't he?"

Gray, "I would have to say looking back on it now,

I would have to conclude that that probably is correct."

Byrd, "Yet on yesterday, you said you would continue

to send files to Dean if he requests them."

Gray, "You have got to realize I am the head of a bureau

"in the executive branch of government.

I've got to take orders from somebody."

- That element of ubiquity about Mr. John Dean,

he's everywhere at all times in connection

to this Watergate investigation.

- Dean's involvement with the FBI inquiry has added

to Democratic suspicions that Gray was put under White House

pressure in the Watergate investigation.

They want to call the President's counsel

as a witness.

Even one Republican agreed today this may be necessary

to assure Gray's confirmation.

- The White House has already said that Dean

will not testify.

But the Senate threatened

not to confirm Gray unless

the newly-formed Senate Watergate Committee

was allowed to question Dean

and other White House officials.

- If the Gray nomination depends on a satisfactory

outcome of the Watergate investigation.

Uh, that in turn presumably depends on various White House

staff people appearing before your Select Committee

on the Watergate.

The White House says they won't come.

What are you gonna do?

- I'd recommend to the Senate to send the sergeant-at-arms

of the Senate to arrest the White House aide

or any other witness who refuses to appear.

At the same time, the Watergate burglars

were starting to crack under pressure from Judge Sirica,

and they were also starting to blackmail the White House.

- Mr. Hunt, why did you plead as you did?

- Mr. Hunt'll have no comment.

- March 19th, one of the lawyers

from the Re-election Committee comes directly to my office

and--with a message the likes of which

I had not received before.

He said, "John, Howard Hunt has a message for you."

And it was that if he wasn't given $122,000 yesterday,

for all practical purposes, he was gonna have some seamy

things to say about what he'd done for John Ehrlichman.

That was clear a threat about the Ellsberg break-in.

And I just realize, this is gonna go on forever.

It's--there's no ending.

If we don't end this cover-up, uh, it's only gonna get more

complex, not less, and there's only one person

who can end it, and that's Richard Nixon.

Another Watergate burglar, James McCord,

was already talking to Judge Sirica.

And John Dean knew that if Hunt and McCord talked,

it would be fatal for the Nixon White House

and for John Dean.

On March 21, Dean went to Nixon.

- I think there's no doubt about the seriousness

of the problem.

We have a cancer within, close to the presidency.

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.

And there is no assurance--

- That it won't bust.

- That that won't bust.

So let me give you the basic facts.

- On June 17th, I got the word there'd been

this break-in at the Democratic National Committee.

- You knew who it was. - I knew who it was.

So I called Liddy.

I said, "I wanna know how this happened."

He said, "Well, I was pushed by Magruder."

Magruder's perjured himself.

Liddy said that if they all got counsel instantly,

"Well, we'll ride this out."

Then they started making demands.

Attorneys fees.

Uh, "We don't have money and you're asking us to take this

through the election?"

So arrangements were made through Mitchell, uh,

initiating it.

I was present.

That these guys had to be taken care of.

Kalmbach was brought in. Raised some cash.

That's the most troublesome thing.

Because Bob is involved in that.

John is involved in that. I am involved in that.

Mitchell is involved in that.

And that is an obstruction of justice.

- The fact that you're taking care of witnesses.

- Now, the blackmail is continuing.

Hunt is demanding another 120-some-thousand dollars.

Wanted it by close of business yesterday.

Hunt has now made a direct threat.

Now, the continued blackmail will go on.

And it will compound the obstruction

of justice situation.

It'll cost money. It's dangerous.

People here are not pros at this.

This is the sort of thing mafia people can do.

Washing money, we just don't know about these things.

We're not criminals. - That's right.

How much money do you need?

- I would say a million dollars over the next 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.

- Uh-huh.

What if it starts breaking and they find a criminal case

against a Haldeman, a Dean, a Mitchell, an Ehrlichman?

Some people are gonna have to go to jail.

- You'll go to jail? - That's right.

- I can't see how a legal case can be made against you.

- Obstruction of justice.

- The obstruction of justice, I feel,

could be cut off at the pass.

Let us suppose that you get the million bucks

and get the proper way to handle it.

It would seem to me that would be worthwhile.

I was talking to John about this situation.

We can get the money.

There's no problem in that.

We can't provide the clemency.

If you hunker down and fight,

your view is that's not a viable option.

- It's a very high risk.

- Well, John's point is exactly right.

Well, the erosion now is going to you,

and we've got to figure out where to turn it off

at the lowest cost we can but at whatever cost it takes.

- We cannot let you be tarnished.

- It isn't just Hunt.

It's, uh, Liddy and McCord and the Cubans.

So Dean finally goes running to Mitchell and said,

"Uh, I've got to have some money."

Kalmbach can't do it anymore and--and shouldn't.

- Dangerous things are...

raising the money.

- You can't have a fundraising drive and give everybody

certificates and gold pens.

- The obstruction of justice.

- See, I hadn't really thought of that.

- We're all in it.

I think up to this point,

we had certain choices.

But that's gone.