Original subtitles

I am your voice!

Your voice...

I was going to fire Comey.

My decision.

This Russia thing

with Trump and Russia

is a made-up story.

The president responding,

"I have the absolute right

to do what I want to do with the Justice Department."

That could be viewed as an abuse of power

and obstruction of justice.

The only thing that can destroy

the United States is us,

by allowing our Constitution and the rule of law

to disintegrate.

Is the President of the United States

above the law?

It is the FBI that is sworn to uphold

the rule of law and protect and defend the Constitution

against all enemies.

What is the FBI to do

when the president breaks his own oath?

This is a-- is a way of undermining

our justice system.

Let's be clear.

That is something that happens in a dictatorship.

That is not something that happens in a democracy.

The Russia case against the Trump White House

began with a break-in

at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

We have seen this before.

Five men were arrested early Saturday

while trying to install eavesdropping equipment

at the Democratic National Committee.

I, Ronald Reagan...

William Jefferson Clinton...

Do solemnly swear...

Do solemnly swear...

...and will, to the best of my ability...

...preserve, protect, and defend...

...the Constitution of the United States.

And here it is, 13 minutes before 9:00.

We're going to have a variably cloudy and hot day today,

with a chance of late afternoon showers

and a high in the low 90s.

Helen Reddy at WMAL.

"You and Me Against the World."

It's 18 now past eleven o'clock in Washington, D.C...

It's June 17th, 1972.

I was taking a shower, and I receive a phone call.

I had to get out, I'm dripping wet,

with a towel around me,

and before I could dry off,

the clerk on duty at the Washington field office

says to me over the phone,

"Five men have been arrested

in the early morning hours

burglarizing the Democratic national headquarters

at the Watergate Hotel."

I was awakened by a phone call.

"Five men had been arrested, and the SAC wants you

to go down there and get the facts."

I, argued a little bit,

because my four sons

had baseball practice that morning.

"You'll probably be home in about two hours.

Your wife can take the boys to practice."

One of the most fascinating and exotic stories

ever to come out of Washington, D.C.

Five men were arrested early Saturday

at the Democratic National Committee,

and it turns out

that one of them has an office

in the headquarters of the Committee

for the Re-Election of the President.

G. Gordon Liddy, a member

of the Committee to Re-Elect the President...

When the Watergate arrests occurred,

I happened to have been in Manila.

I started getting telephone calls.

"There's been some sort of incident

at the-- at the Watergate complex,

and there's some concern

about White House involvement in this thing."

I flew back.

As soon as I got in the office,

I got a call from the number two man

at the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

He said, "This is all Liddy's fault,"

and I said, "Well, why can't you talk to him?"

And he said, "Well, I had an incident at the elevator.

I put my arm on Gordon's shoulder

in a very friendly way.

He said, 'If you ever touch me again,

I'll rip your arm out of your body

and beat you to death with it.'"

And he said, "John, I think he was actually serious."

And I realize it's not a very smart move

to bring Liddy over here.

I intercept him before he can get to my office

and suggest we walk down 17th Street,

and Liddy confesses to me.

He says, "This is all my fault.

Don't let anybody take me out at my house.

I don't want a drive-by shooting.

I've got kids

You just tell me what street corner to be on

and what night to be there,

and you can take me out."

And I said, "Gordon." I said, "That's crazy.

We just don't do those sort of things."

He said, "Well, I just want you to know where I'm coming from,

and I'm ready to pay the price."

We go into

the Metropolitan Police headquarters.

There are Cuban nationals. Who are these guys?

I don't have to ask the question.

All five gave false names initially to the police.

Yeah, I interviewed the Cuban burglars.

FBI experts are trained to score hits

from any position.

J. Edgar Hoover was the longest-serving director

of the FBI.

He really was the man who built the FBI.

There are three needs in America today

in law enforcement:

the elimination of politics

from law enforcement,

emphasis on efficiency,

and cooperation between police agencies.

Hoover had a very particular image

of the kind of man that he wanted as an agent,

what we would think of today as the kind of G-man,

or the government man.

The G-man,

when I was a boy,

was one of the coolest

persons you could be.

By interesting the boy of today,

we hope to prevent

the criminal of tomorrow.

Well, Jack, what have you got to say for yourself?

I'm so short, I'll have to get up on the box.

All right, Jack-on-the-box.

Gee, Mr. Hoover.

Your G-men sure are good.

I'd like to be one when I grow up.

Our appearance under Mr. Hoover

was white shirt and tie, suit.

He would be a tall, pretty trim,

clean-cut, good-looking, white man...

Who has a last name

like Stevenson or Jones.

Nothing that is too confusingly ethnic.

For the hands and other parts of the body

are valuable personal weapons

for defense and counterattack.

A number of effective blows can be aimed

at the region of the heart...

the stomach...

the groin.

It's really hard to overstate

J. Edgar Hoover's influence.

For most of his career,

he was one of the most popular,

well-respected federal officials

in all of government,

shaping American government,

shaping popular political culture, too.

I'm making him sound like such a nice man.

In 1947,

Hoover made a rare appearance in testimony

before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Communism is a way of life,

an evil and malignant way of life.

There was a young freshman,

newly elected, from California,

Richard M. Nixon.

Hoover had been the face

of American anti-communism

for nearly 30 years.

From that day forward, there would be two:

J. Edgar Hoover and Richard M. Nixon.

I am holding in my hand a microfilm

of very highly confidential, secret documents

fed out of the State Department

by communists who were interested

in seeing that these documents were sent

to the Soviet Union.

It's very clear that they share

a kind of deep concern

about the communist question.

They both see the political utility

of the communist question,

and in many ways,

it is the beginning of

a genuine, if also highly political,

friendship that lasts until Nixon is president.

Nixon would call Hoover

"My closest friend in all of political life."

From the outset,

Nixon and Hoover's FBI would work together

outside the law

through wiretapping

to protect and defend Nixon's power,

and to crush anyone who opposed him.

Other agencies were involved in seeking

politically embarrassing information on individuals

who were thought to be enemies of the White House,

but there was also maintained what was called

an enemies list of the White House.

The White House intends

to cooperate fully with the committee

so that the investigation can go forward

in a proper atmosphere of traditional fairness

and due process.

We returned to the field office.

I started going through

and looking at some of the evidence.

There was an AWOL bag.

Inside was 53 rolls

of 35-millimeter film,

two brand-new 35-millimeter cameras,

airline tickets,

and down in the bottom of the bag

was a little black device

with wires dangling from it,

and that's a microphone.

One detective goes into a wall safe,

and he comes out with all these glassine envelopes,

and he spreads them out on--on the desk.

What I see are 34 $100 bills,

brand-new,

with consecutive serial numbers.

Nobody burglarizes anything

with $3,400 in your possession.

You've absolutely no need.

This was not a burglary for material gain.

This has entirely other motivation.

These guys were probably

gonna bug the office.

This is an election year,

1972,

and this burglary is taking place

in the Democratic national headquarters.

I've handled hundreds of burglaries,

and I have never had one

with these elements.

This is a fascinating,

unique opportunity

to do the ultimate

for what you signed up to do.

J. Edgar Hoover-- he wanted lawyers.

He wanted accountants.

He wanted to professionalize the bureau.

Hoover was never a detective.

He never solved a case.

He was a lawyer,

and he was an administrator.

It's under his watch that, you know,

things like the uniform crime reports

are developed, where,

the society actually starts to get a gauge

for how much crime of various types

happens in the United States.

Hoover's real strength was his ability

to process and control the flow of information.

They had files on everyone.

Those files were secret,

and you didn't know what he knew,

and that, actually,

was the big source of his power.

Hoover had made

congressmen, senators,

and even some presidents live in fear

of the secret information he wielded.

Hoover would say,

"Only I can protect you

from your enemies."

What we think of as

the modern surveillance state

begins with J. Edgar Hoover

and his unfettered power

to spy on Americans.

And the Bureau began

widespread bugs and wiretaps.

There were wiretap files on Martin Luther King.

King was a pretty fundamental threat

to Hoover's worldview.

Hoover was a man who had come of age

as the United States

was really solidifying segregation.

He really did believe

in a form of white supremacy.

That evolved into some of the most

outrageous abuses of civil liberties

that the FBI, has ever committed.

Attempted to disrupt Martin Luther King's home life

by sending audio tapes

of his extramarital trysts to his wife.

Notes urging Martin Luther King

to commit suicide.

"King, like all frauds,

your end is approaching.

You could have been our greatest leader.

You, even at an early age,

have turned out to be not a leader,

but a dissolute, abnormal, moral imbecile.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do.

You know what it is. You better take it,

before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self

is bared to the nation."

This is the government of the United States

telling a citizen of the United States

to kill themselves.

None of this is constitutional.

None of this is legal.

All of it is possible

by the development

of a kind of unaccountable

surveillance infrastructure.

Nixon learned everything he knew

about wiretapping and bugging

from J. Edgar Hoover.

My friends, let me make one thing clear:

this is a nation of laws,

and as Abraham Lincoln has said,

no one is above the law, no one is below the law,

and we're going to enforce the law,

and Americans should remember that

if we're going to have law and order.

Within weeks of the inauguration,

Nixon has hired his first in-house detective

to keep track on his political opponents,

and then, by the fall of 1969,

you see Nixon deciding that

there's absolutely no political gain

in being a nice guy.

"The only way that I'm going to survive

is to totally polarize the American people,

make it us versus them, right versus left."

But there wasn't an enemy in Nixon's life

that he would ever forgive,

and he didn't plan to forget them.

Nixon thought that the FBI

is something that could serve the president,

that you should use it

to prosecute your enemies.

In June 1970,

President Nixon called J. Edgar Hoover

and the other chiefs of the American

intelligence communities

into the White House and said,

"Our national security is under threat."

All power to the people!

"I wanna take the gloves off.

I want the powers of the FBI and the CIA

to spy on the American people, unlimited,

and I want a plan on my desk

on how you're gonna do this."

And they look around

for a bright young conservative

who will do these kinds of things.

They come across a guy named Tom Charles Huston.

He puts it all down on paper,

including the fact that some of these things are illegal.

Hoover looked at this and said,

"Wait a minute. We do break-ins.

We do wiretapping.

We do surveillance," and he objected,

not because of the illegality.

He objected because, gee, this is FBI turf.

And Hoover wouldn't sign it.

Nixon figures, "If Hoover won't do my dirty work,

I'm gonna find some people who will."

Nixon set up his own little bucket shop

of ex-CIA and ex-FBI agents.

And these dangerous men

were known as the White House Plumbers.

The Plumbers would carry out

political dirty tricks.

It was, in the end, not a wise strategy.

Five men were arrested early Saturday

at the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Hoover, did the president-elect indicate

whether he'd like you to continue on?

I feel fine.

I think hard work is good for anybody.

I've been working hard for many years.

How many more years would you like to work hard?

As long as my health would, sustain me.

I passed, 100%, physical examination

last summer at this--

at the clinic in La Jolla, California.

I thought he was getting old.

The White House wanted him to be

much more aggressive in dealing with leaks.

Nixon begins to talk with his aides about this.

They come up with plans.

And then, Nixon pretty much chickens out.

Nixon tells his staff,

"I'm gonna go in there,

I'm gonna tell him that he has to leave,"

and instead, Hoover walks out with a smile on his face,

and Nixon says, "I couldn't do it."

It's kind of like, I don't know,

firing your own grandfather,

or your own-- your own older uncle.

The face-to-face meetings stopped

between Nixon and Hoover.

The phone calls dwindled down

to one every month or two.

New Year's Day, 1972.

Nixon invited Hoover down

to the Florida White House of the day,

down in Key Biscayne.

They had New Year's Eve together,

and New Year's Day was Hoover's 77th birthday.

They had a cake on Air Force One,

but it was a joyless affair.

These political players,

despite all their rivalries,

develop affections and understandings

for each other, which, in clumsy attempts,

sort of come to pass for what, um,

they perceive as friendships or respect.

Ladies and gentlemen,

it is with a profound sense of personal loss

that I learned of the death of J. Edgar Hoover.

America's pride

has always been its people,

and once in a long while,

of giants

who stand head and shoulders

above their countrymen.

J. Edgar Hoover

was one of the giants.

When he hears of Hoover's death,

Nixon's immediate reaction was surprise,

but also, perhaps, delight,

in that this obstacle had been removed

by the good Lord.

Hoover had amassed

an amazing amount of confidential files.

Mark Felt was concerned that Nixon would use them.

Mark Felt was, under Hoover,

the number three man at the FBI.

Mark Felt is a true FBI person,

a Hoover loyalist,

somebody who believed in kind of the Bureau first.

One of the first things

that Mark Felt thought about when Hoover died

was to get rid of these files, which were political dynamite.

Second thing is he hoped that

he would be appointed Hoover's successor.

As in the case of other venerable public figures,

speculation on who will succeed J. Edgar Hoover

has long preceded his death.

Nixon saw this as a great opportunity.

This was the moment that Nixon had been waiting for.

What he decided to do was not to appoint

an internal candidate.

He appointed an outsider,

a guy named L. Patrick Gray.

One of those guys who had

"RN" tattooed on his posterior.

No one individual

could replace Mr. Hoover.

I will do my best

to follow Mr. Hoover as acting director

of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pat Gray was not J. Edgar Hoover.

He was not the kind of man to inspire loyalty.

And here is a--a man

who was appointed by the president,

who wasn't investigated as thoroughly as we were.

Our new boss of the moment

is this obscure naval captain

with absolutely no hint how the FBI runs.

The president appointed L. Patrick Gray

for the sole reason of trying to control him,

and he was controllable.

Nixon thought he was

in command and control of the FBI.

...designating Mr. L. Patrick Gray

as the active director of the FBI.

I think that people should support the president,

and I think it's really rotten,

the way they've been talking about him.

I still feel that,

it was his aides that, more or less,

must stand the blame for it.

How much do you think

that publicity attending this case

is hurting President Nixon's reelection campaign?

Not in the slightest.

I don't believe it'll hurt in the slightest,

for the very simple reason that neither

the president, obviously, or anybody in the White House,

or anybody in authority in any of the committees

working for the reelection of the president

have any responsibility for it.

I'm not gonna answer any specific questions

on anything relating to this case,

I--other than to say

that--that I am cooperating fully

with the investigating agencies.

The five individuals had been fingerprinted.

All five gave false names initially to the police,

but we've identified who they are.

Three are Cuban nationals.

One individual with the last name Barker.

The fifth individual

is someone named James McCord.

James McCord was a former CIA agent.

In June, the break-in had occurred.

Before, in May,

an individual who runs a photography shop

was approached by Barker...

Well, they asked for rush service.

I realized then that there was something

a little bit shady going on.

...to develop a photograph of a document

that said "Democratic National Committee headquarters."

He could see the hands of four individuals

wearing rubber gloves,

and the document was photographed on a shaggy rug.

One of the agents found a card.

E. Howard Hunt.

E. Howard Hunt had a clandestine office

in Washington, D.C.

He was still shown

as a person who could have access to the White House.

They apparently never took away his badge.

It's gotta be CIA.

We have the money.

We're tracing this money.

E. Howard Hunt, a CIA case manager.

It's gotta be CIA.

You have checks from Mexico,

a check from Boca Raton...

And then we found out the Cubans

were CIA operatives.

You're talking over $100,000.

I think we stumbled into a CIA operation.

So everything came back CIA, CIA.

Pat Gray picks up the scuttlebutt

that maybe this could be a CIA operation.

Four days after the arrest at the Watergate,

it's Mitchell who comes up with the idea

of having the CIA

block the FBI's investigation.

They are to instruct the FBI to back off,

because it's a matter of national security.

The Republicans got some bad news today.

The Washington Post has discovered

that $25,000 in political contributions

to President Nixon's campaign

somehow turned up in a Florida bank account.

This particular story refers to a secret fund.

Mr. Dean informed me that he was cleared,

and that there was no secret fund.

We really didn't know

where the genesis of this particular burglary

had come from.

The Committee to Re-Elect the President

and the White House put severe restrictions on the FBI

concerning how the interviews could be conducted.

The interviews had to be conducted

on their premises.

They had to be conducted

with a lawyer representing the committee

or the White House present during the entire interview.

I get a call from the office,

saying I have this woman on the line.

She got on the phone, and she said, "Look, I couldn't talk.

The White House attorney was there.

I have lots, lots, to tell you."

She wants to meet with you in Virginia

at the Marriott Hotel,

and she wants to feel you out.

She wants to know if she can trust you.

We met Judy Hoback,

and we sat there for about 45 minutes,

engaging in small talk.

We put the question forward: "Would--would you

be interviewed concerning what you did?"

And she said she would.

When, the break-in

of the Watergate happened,

I, walked into the, um, copy room

where the shredder was.

Gordon Liddy was in there,

and he was at the shredder,

and he said, "Judy, I don't think

you want to be in here right now."

I knew that I had compromising material,

and I went over and shredded everything,

including 13 consecutively serialized $100 bills,

which I put between...

two pieces of paper so that the people

wouldn't see that I was shredding $100 bills

and thinking I'd lost my mind.

We had cash funds in our safe.

Gordon Liddy got money, Jeb Magruder got money,

fellow by the name of Porter got money.

At one point, I, was coming home from work

and felt like I was being followed.

And I called Paul and John,

and they told me that I had

every reason to be concerned.

My phone might very well be tapped.

I was fearful for my daughter.

Well, we went to her house in Maryland,

and we interviewed her from about

nine o'clock in the evening

to about four o'clock in the morning.

That interview was a huge break in the case.

It established that the individuals

were, in fact, funded--funded

by the Committee to Re-Elect the President,

so it shifted the spotlight

from the CIA

to the presidential apparatus itself.

...Anything to do, or knew about, the Watergate break

I have no information on that.

Coming back for more questioning, Mr. Hunt?

E. Howard Hunt, Jr., former CIA agent,

White House consultant, and novelist,

whose name was listed in suspects' address books,

fled a chase through the Washington streets,

trying to get back undercover.

I guess you really don't want

to answer any questions right now.

I can't.

At some time, do you think you will?

I doubt it.

On March 19th of 1973,

Hunt sends a message directly to me

that he wants $122,000 yesterday,

or he's gonna have seamy things to say

about the president.

That's when I become concerned.

I realized this isn't gonna go away.

We're being, extorted today,

and it's gonna go on forever.

There's only one way to-- to deal with it,

and that's end the cover-up.

I pulled out of thin air, at the time,

what I thought was a hefty number.

I tried to shock him.

I don't respect the type of journalism,

the shabby journalism, that is being practiced

by The Washington Post,

and I use the term

"shoddy journalism," "shabby journalism,"

and I've used the term "character assassination."

Carl Bernstein and I

were working on Watergate at The Washington Post,

and a secret man

called "Deep Throat" was saying,

"Hey, look, there's something big here.

There is an overall giant operation."

He wanted to assist.

Deep Throat set up an arrangement.

We would meet in a parking garage over in Virginia.

If I wanted to talk to him,

I would move a flowerpot on my balcony,

and if he wanted to meet, he would circle

page 20 of my New York Times.

He made it clear Howard Hunt was a chief suspect.

It's my view that this, matter has reached

the level of unbelievable absurdity.

Deep Throat was worried

about what the Nixon White House was doing.

It's just gone too far.

He didn't like the criminality.

There was nothing borderline illegal

about what Nixon and his people did.

It was flatly illegal.

I refer to it as

the Saturday morning massacre.

L. Patrick Gray was convinced

it was agents of the Washington field office

had leaked this information.

And I got a--a call,

"L. Patrick Gray wants to see you in his office."

And we're in J. Edgar Hoover's old

formal office now,

and there's this huge oval table.

12 agents on one side, 12 on the other.

He grabs the rostrum with both hands.

He became enraged.

And he begins

the out-of-control rant.

His face was flush.

He said, "I know that the leak came

from an agent or agents in this room."

"So I want that agent

to step forward, and I want you

to put your credentials on the table,

because you're fired."

"I will get to the bottom of this!"

Everybody looked around, and says, ""

Nobody in the room leaked information,

so nobody stepped forward.

"You will not fool me!"

I was so angry that had I seen him on the street,

I would've spat in his face.

"I will find out."

The leak didn't come from us.

We don't know where the leak came from.

You denied, a number of times,

being Deep Throat, the source that--

that Bob Woodward and, Carl Bernstein

credited for many of their Watergate disclosures,

and what I'm wondering is that

whether you want to take credit at this time

for helping unmask any of the Watergate cover-up.

No, no, I'm-- I'm not Deep Throat.

One time, I was sent over

to the White House,

and was sitting next to a man who was

this, clear authority figure.

He represented that powerful secret side of government.

I introduced myself,

and he said he was Mark Felt.

I got his phone number

and called him a couple of times,

almost making him a career counselor.

I don't think Nixon had

any intention of naming Mark Felt

director of the FBI, but I think,

Mark Felt thought that he was the logical successor.

Mark Felt was quite upset about this,

and he set out to both

protect the FBI from the Nixon administration,

and, to some degree,

wreak some revenge.

Mark Felt decided from the outset

that he had to leak information in Watergate,

to make sure that the investigation didn't get

shut down right away.

Mark Felt was not an ethical man.

A hero? Mark Felt was a bum.

He took the same oath that FBI agents took

and violated that oath.

I think whoever helped Woodward helped the country,

no question about it.

It would be 33 years

before the identity of Deep Throat

was revealed to the public,

but Nixon had Washington well enough wired

so that he knew ten days

after the first stories were printed.

And Nixon says, "Well, what are we

gonna do about this?"

Can't fire Felt.

He knows everything that's been going on in the FBI--

not only wiretapping, bugging,

break-ins, burglaries,

but poison pen letters,

efforts to destroy a person in the press,

Hoover's long, long campaign

to destroy Martin Luther King.

And worse for Nixon, he knows everything

about the Kissinger wiretaps.

The Kissinger wiretaps,

they are of White House aides,

Kissinger's staff,

and two journalists:

people that Nixon, suspected

were leaking to the press.

There were leaks that exposed,

like, the secret Cambodia bombing,

which showed lie after lie,

deception after deception.

The leaks fingered exactly the people

who had done all these illegal activities.

That's what Nixon was fighting.

"My God. We can't let the people know

how and why we're conducting this war."

Those wiretaps were conducted

by the FBI.

The transcripts of these tapes

were political dynamite.

This political dynamite

was in Felt's control.

Nixon's running.

All the polls show he's gonna win,

and we're saying this is a massive criminal conspiracy

run by him and his people.

I give him the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think a man in his position

would resort to something like that.

Get off the Watergate

and on to something more important.

You know, we're working against the grain here.

Nixon won reelection in a landslide.

This may be one of the great

political victories of all time.

In terms of votes, that may be true,

but in terms of what a victory really is,

a huge landslide margin

means nothing at all

unless it is a victory for America.

- It will be a... Nixon spends

that election night in total misery,

because having achieved that,

he still has not

healed the wound within him.

There is an outlook called the loss frame,

and when you're in the loss frame,

you tend to make irrational

and not really clear-thinking decisions.

I had no prior knowledge

of the Watergate break-in.

I neither took part in, nor knew about

any of the subsequent cover-up activities.

I found it particularly telling

for how many bad decisions were made during Watergate.

Dean is very young

and wet behind the ears,

but he quickly

adopts the tough-talking,

run-over-your-own-grandmother,

anything-for-Nixon approach,

and he does see that what's happening here

is enough to send them all to prison,

the president included.

President Nixon is today accepting

the resignation of two of his closest friends

and most trusted assistants in the White House,

H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

I've also been asked to announce that the president

has today requested and accepted

the resignation of John Dean.

John Dean is willing to be

the prosecution's star witness

in the investigation of the Watergate scandal.

He will talk, and presumably name names,

and provide even more details,

only if he himself is granted

total immunity from prosecution.

And with his cooperation,

the FBI has a foot in the Oval Office.

Some of the things that were

being discussed in these meetings

I didn't want to make records of, Senator.

Why, sir?

I thought they were very incriminating

to the President of the United States.

Dean joins 14 others who have gone to jail

because of the Watergate scandal.

He will be moved to a minimum-security prison

in California for the duration

of his one- to four-year sentence.

As my lawyer said, if you kick the king,

you better kill him.

You're fully aware, Mr. Dean,

of the gravity of the charges you have made

under oath, against the highest official

of our land, the President of the United States?

Yes, I am.

It's a beautiful

April Friday in Washington, D.C.

On order of the attorney general,

there will be a dozen FBI agents.

No raid jackets.

Just these credentials that said "FBI" in blue across.

They will be entering

"Hey, FBI! FBI!"

They will be securing and locking down

the West Wing of the White House.

All business offices of the White House

including the president's.

I was rather amused by

some very well-intentioned people

who thought that perhaps the burdens

of the office--that I might get so tired that,

I would consider either slowing down or...

...or even, some suggested, resigning.

Well, now, just so we set that to rest,

I'm gonna use a phrase

that my Ohio father used to use.

That's just plain poppycock.

We're gonna stay on this job till we get the job done.

People in the Senate Watergate Committee

started saying "Okay, who are the satellite witnesses?"

It was Mark Felt who said,

"Somebody in the White House

named Alexander Butterfield

is a guy who might know something."

Where you want it to go.

If it had anything to do

with the president or the Oval Office,

I was that point of contact

with the Secret Service, the FBI,

the military aides' office.

I heard that the president wants a taping system put in,

and it's very, very classified.

Subcommittee will come to order.

Mr. Butterfield, are you aware

of the installation of any listening devices

in the Oval Office of the president?

I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.

An unheralded former White House aide

named Alexander Butterfield drops a bombshell.

The president has secretly taped

all of his White House conversations,

including those involving Watergate.

Turn your hand over and let it go out.

Turn your hand over and let it go out.

Now jerk it back.

I'll-I'll stay here and try to

learn how to use the yo-yo.

You go out and be president, Roy.

As the walls closed in,

Nixon was almost flailing,

looking for political support around the country,

and one of his final bases

was in the American South.

The country tonight is in the midst

of what may be the most serious

constitutional crisis in its history.

At 8:15, Friday night,

the president announced

that he would not obey a court order

to surrender the Watergate tapes.

The Supreme Court has just ruled on the tapes...

Newly-released tapes show that he approved

the whole Watergate cover-up

just six days after the break-in.

I had no prior knowledge

of the Watergate break-in.

I neither took part in,

nor knew about, any of the subsequent

cover-up activities.

Washington Post ran a story.

It was wrong.

It is based on hearsay.

This is the first time that a president has ever

left office voluntarily.

As we watch President Nixon

fly away from Washington for the last time.

By the time he arrives in San Clemente,

he will be private citizen Nixon.

When he gets off the plane

in southern California after leaving Washington,

for--for a final few hours,

he goes through the motions, and you can see him

acting presidential, acting as if he's got it all,

um, still together,

and then they get in that car, and--

and he loses it,

to the extent that

at one point that summer,

his kids are begging President Ford

to pardon their dad,

because they fear that

through natural causes,

or possibly by just walking

out into the ocean one day,

Nixon's life is gonna be

cut short from the price

that he's paying for Watergate.

What happened in Watergate

and the ultimate result of Watergate

and the FBI playing this key role--

I think it established

that the FBI does have this responsibility.

Was not until Watergate that we saw

that the domestic enemy of our Constitution

could be the President of the United States himself.

The FBI wasn't gonna be

pushed around by the Nixon administration.

They were investigators who were gonna find out

what happened at a moment when

the White House itself very much wants this

to be shut down.

Well, it's a shame

what's happened with the FBI.

When everybody-- the level of anger

at what they've been witnessing

with respect to the FBI-- it's certainly very sad.

The FBI is so American.

If it didn't exist now,

we'd have to reinvent it,

because it's embedded in law and rules,

but it has its own culture

and it is independent.

You see this now

with the firing of James Comey.

Comey is the embodiment of this kind of,

"Hey, we're the FBI.

We're G-men,

we're gonna do it our way.

Yeah, there are rules, but you know what?

I'm not playing by 'em."

There's never been a full public accounting

of FBI domestic intelligence operations.

Therefore, this committee has undertaken

such an investigation.

In 1975 and 1976,

the skeletons came tumbling out

of the FBI's closet.

30 years of systemically violating

the civil rights of Americans.

What you've described

is a series of illegal actions

intended squarely to deny

First Amendment rights to some Americans.

For a very brief moment,

Watergate sort of pulled the cover off

of all the other dirty tricks that

other presidents had been countenancing,

um, throughout the Cold War,

and so you had some immediate well-intentioned efforts

on Capitol Hill.

But lessons learned in Washington

are usually lessons learned very briefly.

Mr. President, you have stated flatly

that you did not trade weapons for hostages.