Part II

TRANSCRIPTS

7

WATERGATE

We knew that Watergate would be the key moment of the Frost/Nixon interviews. If we failed every other subject but scored impressive points on Watergate, the interviews would be successful. If we did every other thing right but got Watergate wrong, we would fail. The strategy was to confront Nixon at every turn. If his factual statements were wrong, challenge them. If his interpretation of the law was off base, correct it. Know the record as thoroughly as it could be known, and let him know that we know it so he will abandon attempts to run roughshod over us. Most important, never stray from our theory of the case. The cover-up began within hours of the Watergate arrests. The president was apprised about those involved early on. He orchestrated efforts to impede and divert those investigating the crime while buying the silence of those who had committed it.

FROST: Mr. President, to try and review your account of Watergate, ah…in one program is a daunting task, but, ah, we’ll press first of all through the sort of factual record and the sequence of events as concisely as we can to begin with. But just one brief, preliminary question: Reviewing now your conduct over the whole of the Watergate period, with the additional perspective now of three years out of office and so on, do you feel that you ever obstructed justice? Or were part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice?

NIXON: Well, in answer to that question, I think that the best procedure would be for us to do exactly what you’re going to do on this program; ah, to go through the whole record in which I will, ah, say what I did; ah, what my motives were; ah, and, ah, then I will give you my evaluation as to, ah, whether those actions or, ah, anything I said, for that matter, ah, amounted to what you have called an obstruction, ah, of justice. Ah, I will express an opinion on it, but I think what we should do is to go over it, ah, the whole matter, so that, ah, our viewers will have an opportunity to know what we are talking about. Ah, ah, so that in effect, ah, they, as they listen, ah, will be able to hear the facts, ah, make up their own minds. I’ll express my own opinion. They may have a different opinion. You may have a different opinion. Ah, but that is really the best way to do it, rather than to preclude it in advance and maybe prejudice their viewpoint.

FROST: I’m very happy to do that, because I think the only way, really, to examine all of these events is on a blow-by-blow account of, of what occurred. So, beginning with June 20, then, what did Haldeman tell you during the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap?

NIXON: Haldeman’s notes, ah, are the only recollection I have of what he told me. Haldeman was a very good note taker, ah, because, of course, we’ve had other opportunities to look at his notes and he was very…he was making the notes for my presidential files. The notes indicated—

FROST: PR offensive and—

NIXON: That’s right.

FROST:—all of that.

NIXON: Well, of course. Ah, they…the notes were—

FROST: Diversion.

NIXON: Well, you’ve asked me what it was. My recollection was that the notes showed…“Check the EOB to see whether or not it’s bugged.” Obviously, I was concerned about whether or not the other side was bugging us. I went on to say, ah, “Let’s get a public relations offensive on what the other side is doing in this area and so forth,” ah, and in effect, ah, ah, “Don’t allow, ah, the, ah, ah, Democratic opposition, ah…to build this up, ah, into basically, ah…blow it up into a big political issue.” Those were the concerns expressed. And I have no recollection of the conversation except that.

Our first intimation of Nixon’s defense to involvement in the cover-up came as we confronted him with a previously unreported tape of a June 20, 1972, conversation between the president and his political aide Charles Colson. In discussing the break-in with Colson, the president used words consistent with bottling up the facts. How could he explain this early planning to keep significant facts from coming to light?

FROST: But as far as your general state of knowledge that evening, ah, when you were talking with Chuck Colson on the evening of June the twentieth, it suggests that, from somewhere, your knowledge has gone much further. You say, “If we didn’t know better, we’d have thought the whole thing had been deliberately botched.” Colson tells you, “Bob is pulling it all together. Thus far, I think we’ve done the right things to date.” And you say, “Ba…ah, basic…” He says, “Basically, they’re all pretty hard-line guys.” And you say, “You mean, Hunt?” And you say, “Of course, we’re just gonna leave this where it is with the Cubans. At times, I just stonewall it.” And you also say, “We gotta have lawyers smart enough to have our people delay.” Now, somewhere you were pretty well informed by that conversation on June 20.

NIXON: As far as my information on June 20 is concerned, ah, I had been informed ah, by…with regard to the possibility of Hunt’s involvement, ah, whether I knew on the twentieth or the twenty-first or twenty-second, I knew something…I learned in that period about the possibility of Liddy’s involvement. Of course, I knew about the Cubans and McCord, who were all picked up at the scene of the crime. Ah, no, ah, you have read here, ah, excerpts out of a conversation with Colson. Ah, and, let me say, as far as my motive was concerned—and that’s the important thing—my motive was, in everything I was saying or certainly thinking at the time, ah, ah, was not, ah, to try to cover up a criminal action. But to be sure that, as far as any slip-over, or should I say “slop-over,” I think would be a better word, any slop-over in a way that would, ah, ah, damage innocent people or blow it into political proportions…it was that that I certainly wanted to avoid.

FROST: So you invented the CIA thing on the twenty-third as a cover?

Once again Nixon will incorrectly offer the purity of his motives as a defense of conduct that is clearly criminal. Even at this early stage of the interrogation it was possible to get a read on Nixon’s approach. He was tough-minded, self-confident, and unflinching in his own defense. He was giving no ground. He was testing my knowledge of the law and the various transactions that had led to the cover-up charges. He would yield only when members of his own staff warned him that the hard line he was taking would impede his efforts to again become a member in good standing of the national political community.

NIXON: No. Now, let’s…let’s use the word cover-up, though, in the sense that it had…should be used and should not be used. If a cover-up is for the purpose of covering up criminal activities, it is illegal. If, however, a cover-up, as you have called it, is for a motive that is not criminal, that is something else again. And my motive was not criminal. I didn’t believe that we were covering any criminal activities. Ah, I didn’t believe that John Mitchell was involved. Ah, I didn’t believe, ah, that, ah, for that matter, anybody else was. I was trying to contain it politically. And, that’s a very different motive from the motive of attempting to cover up criminal activities of an individual. And so there was no cover-up of any criminal activities; that was not my motive.

FROST: But surely, in all you’ve said, you have proved, exactly, that that was the case; that there was a cover-up of criminal activity because you’ve already said, and the record shows, that you knew that Hunt and Liddy were involved; you’d been told that Hunt and Liddy were involved. At the moment when you told the CIA to tell the FBI to “stop, period” as you put it. At that point, only five people had been arrested. Liddy was not even under suspicion, and so you knew in terms of intent, and you knew in terms of foreseeable consequence, ah, that the result would be that, in fact, criminals would be protected. Hunt and Liddy, who were criminally liable, would be protected. You knew about them. The whole statement says that, ah, ah, “We…we’re gonna…” Haldeman says, “We don’t want you to go any further on it. Get them to stop. They don’t need to pursue it, they’ve already got their case.” Walter’s notes, that he said, “Five suspects have been arrested, this should be sufficient.” You said, “Tell them, don’t go any further into this case. Period.” By definition, by what you’ve said and by what the record shows, that, per se, was a conspiracy to obstruct justice because you were limiting it to five people when, even if we grant the point that you weren’t sure about Mitchell, you already knew about Hunt and Liddy and had talked about both, so that is obstruction of justice—

NIXON: Now, just a moment.

FROST:—period.

NIXON: Ah, that’s your conclusion.

FROST: It is.

NIXON: But now let’s look at the facts. Ah, the fact is that, as far as Liddy was concerned, ah, what I knew was…was only the fact that, ah, he was the man on the committee, ah, who was in charge of intelligence operations. As far as Hunt is…was concerned, ah, and if you read that tape, you will find I told them to “tell the FBI”—they didn’t know, apparently—“and the CIA that Hunt was involved.” And so there wasn’t any…any attempt, ah, to, ah, keep them from knowing that Hunt was involved. The other important point to bear in mind when you ask, “What happened?” and so forth is what happened two weeks later. Ah, two weeks later when, ah, I was here in San Clemente, I called Pat Gray, the then FBI director, on the phone to congratulate the FBI on a very successful operation they’d had in apprehending some hijackers in San Francisco or someplace abroad. He then brought up the subject, ah, of the Watergate investigation. He said, “There are some people around you who are mortally wounding you, or would…might mortally wound you because they’re trying to restrict this investigation.” And I said, “Well, have you talked to Walters about this matter?” And, he said, “Yes.” I said, “Does he agree?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, Pat”—I know him…had known him very well, of course, over the years, I did call him by his first name. I said, “Pat, you go right ahead with your investigation.” He has so testified, and he did go ahead with the investigation.

Nixon used this July 6 conversation with acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to purge himself of any culpability for the criminal cover-up. After all, when Gray told him that aides were trying to “mortally wound” Mr. Nixon, the president told him to go on with his investigation. The problem with this defense is twofold: first, telling the director to conduct a full investigation while simultaneously orchestrating a cover-up is hardly the stuff of innocent behavior. Second, as I would quickly point out, Nixon had already been participating in a cover-up at least since June 23, and probably before that.

FROST: Yes, but the point is that, ah, obstruction of justice is obstruction of justice if it’s for a minute or five minutes, much less for the period June 23 to July the fifth, when I think it was when he talked to Walters and decided to go ahead, the day before he spoke to you on July the sixth. It’s obstruction of justice how…for however long a period, isn’t it? And, also, it’s no defense to say that the plan failed; that the CIA didn’t go along with it, refused to go along with it, that it was transparent. I mean, if I try and rob a bank and fail, that’s no defense. I still tried to rob a bank. I would say you still tried to obstruct justice and succeeded for that period. He’s testified they didn’t interview Ogarrio—

NIXON: Now, let’s—

FROST:—they didn’t do all of this; and so I would have said it was a successful attempt to obstruct justice for that brief period.

NIXON: Now, just a moment, ah, you’re again making the case, which of course is your responsibility as the attorney for the prosecution, ah, let me make the case as it should be made, ah, even if I were not the one, ah, who was involved ah, for the defense. The case for the defense here is this: you use the term “obstruction of justice.” You perhaps have not read the statute with regard to respect…ah, ah, ah, obstruction of justice—

FROST: Well, I have.

NIXON: Obstruction…well, oh, I’m sorry, of course, you probably have read it, but possibly you might have missed it because when I read it, ah, many years ago, in, ah, ah, perhaps when I was studying law, although the statute didn’t even exist then, because it’s a relatively new statute, as you know. But in any event, ah, when I read it even in recent times, ah, I was not familiar with all of the implications of it. The statue doesn’t require just an act. The statute has the specific provision: one must corruptly impede a judicial—

FROST: Well, you…a corrupt—

NIXON:—matter.

FROST:—endeavor is enough.

NIXON: A con…con…all right, we’ll…a conduct…endeavor. Corrupt intent. But it must be corrupt, and that gets to the point of motive. One must have a corrupt motive. Now, I did not have a corrupt motive.

FROST: You…you were—

NIXON: My motive was pure political containment. And political containment is not a corrupt motive. If so, for example, we…President Truman would have been impeached.

FROST: But the point is that…the point is that your motive can be helpful when intent is not clear. Your intent is absolutely clear; it’s stated again, “Stop this investigation here. Period.” The foreseeable, inevitable consequence, if you’d been successful, would have been that Hunt and Liddy would not have been brought to justice. How can that not be a conspiracy to obstruct justice?

NIXON: No. Wait a minute. “Stop the—”

FROST: You would have protected—

NIXON: “Stop this—”

FROST:—Hunt and Liddy from guilt.

NIXON: “Stop the investigation.” Ah, eh, you still have to get back to the point that I have made, ah, previously, that, when I…that, ah, that my concern there, which was conveyed to them, and the decision then was in their hands. Ah, my concern was having the investigation spread further than it needed to.

FROST: Well…

NIXON: And, as far as that was concerned, ah, I don’t believe, as I said, we turned over the fact that we knew that Hunt was involved, that a possibility that Liddy was involved, ah, but under the circumstances—

FROST: You didn’t turn that over, though, did you?

NIXON: What?

FROST: You didn’t turn that over.

NIXON: No, no, no, no, no. We turned over the fact that Hunt, that, that Hunt was…was involved.

FROST: You never told anyone about Liddy, though.

NIXON: No, not at that point.

FROST: Now after the Gray, ah…after the Gray conversation, the cover-up went on. You would say, I think, that you were not aware of it. I was arguing that you were a part of it as a result of the June the twenty-third, ah, conversations. But you would say that you were—

NIXON: Are you sure I was a part of it as a result of the June 23 conversations?

FROST: Yes.

NIXON: Ah, after July 6, when I talked to Gray?

FROST: I would have said that you joined the conspiracy, which you therefore never left.

NIXON: Yes, no. Well, then we totally disagree on that.

FROST: But, I mean…those are the two positions.

NIXON: That’s right.

FROST: Now, you, in fact, however, would say that you first learned of the cover-up on March the twenty-first. Is that right?

NIXON: On March 21…was the date when I was first informed of the fact, the important fact to me in that conversation, ah, was of the blackmail threat that was being made by Howard Hunt, who was one of the Watergate, ah, ah, participants, but not about Watergate.

At one point in his career, CIA agent Hunt was involved in many sensitive security matters. But his White House activities seemed to be mainly of the dirty tricks variety. He spirited the ITT lobbyist Dita Beard out of town when an embarrassing memo she had penned came to light. He scurried to Chappaquiddick to gather derogatory material on Ted Kennedy after his fatal accident. He was involved in the break-in into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. And his White House safe contained forged cables purporting to show President John F. Kennedy’s approval of plans by South Vietnamese army officers to murder President Ngo Dinh Diem. One can imagine Mr. Nixon not wanting these activities to come to light, but protecting them by orchestrating a criminal cover-up seems only to compound the crime.

FROST: So, during the period between those two dates, between the end of June, beginning of July, and March the twenty-first, ah, while lots of elements of the cover-up, as we now know, were continuing, were you ever made aware of any of them?

NIXON: No. I…I don’t know what you’re referring to.

FROST: Well, for instance, your personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, coming to Washington to start the raising of, ah, 219,000 of hush money, approved by Haldeman and Ehrlichman. They went ahead but without…without clearing it with you?

People who invent innocent motives to explain illegal transactions sometimes sound funny to the point of absurdity. Nixon certainly fit this paradigm as we discussed the raising and distribution of hush money for the Watergate defendants.

NIXON: That was one of the statements that I’ve made, ah, which, ah, after all of the checking we can possibly do…we checked with Haldeman, we checked with Ehrlichman. I wondered, for example, if I had been informed. If I had been informed that money was being raised for humanitarian purposes, to help these people with their defense, I would certainly have approved it. If I had been told that the purpose of the money was to raise it for the purpose of keeping ’em quiet, I would have been…disapproved it.

FROST: But—

NIXON: But the truth of the matter is that I was not told. I did not learn of it until the March period.

FROST: But in that case, if that was the first occasion, why did you say in, ah, such strong terms to Colson, on…on February the fourteenth, which is more than a month before, you said to him, “The cover-up is the main ingredient; that’s where we gotta cut our losses; my losses are to be cut; the president’s loss has gotta be cut on the cover-up deal.”

NIXON: When did I say that?

FROST: February the fourteenth.

NIXON: Well, because I read the American papers. And in January, the stories that came out, they’re not…not just from The Washington Post—the famous series by some unnamed correspondents who have written a best-selling book since then—ah, but, The New York Times, the networks, and so forth, were talking about “hush money.” They were talking about clemency pay…ah, ah, for cover-up, and all the rest. It was that that I was referring to at that point. I was referring to the fact that there was a lot of talk about cover-up and that this must be avoided at all cost.

FROST: But, there’s one, ah, very clear, self-contained quote, and I read the whole of this conversation of February 14, which I don’t think has ever been published, but…and there was one very clear quote in it that I thought was—

NIXON: It hasn’t been published, you say?

FROST: No, I think it’s…it’s available to anybody who consults the records, but, ah—

NIXON: Oh. Yes.

FROST:—but, ah, people don’t consult all the records.

NIXON: Just wondered if we’d seen it.

FROST: Well, I’m…I’m sure you have, yes, but ah…where the president says this, on February the thirteenth, um, “When I’m speaking about Wa—”—this is to Colson—“When I’m speaking about Watergate, though, that’s the whole point of the election. This tremendous investigation rests unless one of the seven begins to talk, that’s the problem.” Now, in that remark, it seems to me that someone running the cover-up couldn’t have expressed it more clearly than that, could they?

Once again Nixon works familiar territory in explaining the noncriminal motives of the criminal cover-up. But this time he adds a new element by claiming he had adopted the role of the attorney for the defense and that his suggestions of how to act and what to say had been intended not to encourage further illegal conduct but rather to explain his dealing to date in the most favorable light.

NIXON: What…what do we mean by “one of the seven beginning to talk”? I’ve…how many times do I have to tell you? Ah, that as far as these seven were concerned, ah, the concern that we had, certainly that I had, ah, was that men, ah, who, ah, worked in this kind of a covert activity, men who, of course, ah, realize it’s dangerous activity to work in, particularly since it involves illegal entry, ah, that, ah, once they’re apprehended, ah, they are likely to say anything. And the question was, I didn’t know of anybody at that point, nobody on the White House staff, not John Mitchell, anybody else that I believed, ah, was involved…ah, criminally. Ah, but on the other hand, I certainly could…could believe that a man like Howard Hunt, who was a prolific book writer, or any one of the others under the pressures of the moment, ah, could have started blowing and putting out all sorts of stories, ah, to embarrass the administration. And, as it later turned out in Hunt’s case, to blackmail the president to provide clemency or to provide money or both.

FROST: I still just think, though, that one has to go contrary to the normal usage of language of almost ten thousand gangster movies, ah, to interpret “This tremendous investigation rests unless one of the seven begins to talk, that’s the problem” as anything other than some sort of conspiracy to stop him talking about something damaging—

NIXON: Well, you can…you can state—

FROST:—to the press and making the speech.

NIXON:—you can state your conclusion, and I’ve stated my views.

FROST: That’s fair.

NIXON: So now we go on with the rest of it.

In one of the most pivotal Watergate conversations, Nixon and Dean met on March 21, 1973, at which time Dean informed the president that unless more money was forthcoming the defendants might “blow.” Of course, by this time the cover-up was in such a state of havoc that its participants, including the president, were grappling with multidimensional requirements: explain your actions; try to skirt the clear meanings of words; scuttle those staffers too deeply involved to save; deal with a White House counsel who had so despaired of saving the presidency that he was now in business strictly for himself.

FROST: Looking back on the record, now, of that conversation—as I’m sure you’ve done in addition to the overall details, which we’ll come to in a minute—bearing in mind that a payment probably was set in motion prior to the meeting and was certainly not completed until late the evening of the meeting, wouldn’t you say that the record of the meeting does show that you endorsed or ratified what was going on, with regard to payment to Hunt?

NIXON: No, the record doesn’t show that at all. In fact, ah, the record actually is ambiguous, ah, until you get to the end, and then it’s quite clear. And what I said…the…later in the day, and what I said the following day, shows what, ah, the facts really are and completely contradicts the fact…the point that has been made, and, ah, again here’s a case where Mr. Jaworski, in his book, conveniently overlooks, ah, what actually was done and what I did say the following day, ah, as well as, ah, ah, other aspects of it. Let me say, I did consider the payment of $120,000 to Hunt’s lawyer and to Hunt, ah, for his attorney’s fees and for support. Ah, I considered it not because Hunt was gonna blow, using our gangster language here, on Watergate because, as the record clearly shows, Dean says, ah, “It isn’t about Watergate, but it’s going to talk about some of the things he’s done for Ehrlichman.” Ah, as far as the payment of the money was concerned, when the total record is read, you will find that it seems to end on a basis which is indecisive, ah, but I clearly remember, and you undoubtedly have it in your notes there, ah, my saying that “The White House can’t do it.” I think for my…were my last words. Ah, because I had gone through the whole, ah, scenario with, ah, Dean and I laid it out, I said, “Look, what would it co—I mean, when you’re talking about all of these people, what would it cost to, ah, take care of them for—”

FROST: Well, no, I’m…I’ve—

NIXON:—and we talked about a million dollars. And I said, “Well, you could raise the money, but doesn’t it finally get down to a question of clemency?” And he said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, you can’t provide clemency, and that would be wrong for sure.” Now, if clemency’s the bottom line, then providing money isn’t going to make any sense.

We now come to what was perhaps the single most significant moment of the Nixon interviews. In preparing to interrogate Nixon, I had assembled a list of some of the most damning references for the need to continue blackmail payments to Howard Hunt and the other Watergate defendants. Most were drawn from the president’s March 21 conversation with John Dean. As I read the various quotes, Nixon’s demeanor changed. Gone were the expression of confidence, the resolve to steamroller his adversary, the flimsy excuses that followed flimsy excuses over hours of interrogation. As I read the quotes, Nixon’s face became drawn and strained; each quote somehow seemed to have the impact of a blow on the ropes of a virtual boxing ring. Those who today observe the tape suggest that at this moment Nixon knew he was a beaten man. Clearly something had struck home.

FROST: But when you…we talk about the money, the $120,000 demand that, in fact, he got $75,000 of that evening, bearing in mind what you were saying earlier about, reading that the overall context of the conversation, is there any doubt, when one reads…reading the whole conversation:

1.     “You could get a million dollars, and you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.”

2.     “Your major guy to keep under control is Hunt?”

3.     “Don’t you have to handle Hunt’s financial situation?”

4.     “Let me put it frankly: I wonder if that doesn’t have to be continued.”

5.     “Get the million bucks, it would seem to me that would be worthwhile.”

6.     “Don’t you agree that you’d better get the Hunt thing?”

7.     “That’s worth it, and that’s buying time.”

8.     “We should buy the time on that, as I pointed out to John.”

9.     “Hunt has at least got to know this before he’s sentenced.”

10. “First, you’ve got the Hunt problem, that ought to be handled first.”

11. “The money can be provided. Mitchell could provide the way to deliver it. That could be done. See what I mean?”

12. “But let’s come back to the money. [They were off on something else here, desperate to get away from the money, bored to death with the continual references to the money.] A million dollars and so forth and so on. Let me say that I think you could get that in cash.”

13. “That’s why your immediate thing…you’ve got no choice with Hunt but 120 or whatever it is. Right?”

14. “Would you agree that this is a buy-time thing? You’d better damn well get that done…but fast.”

15. “Now, who’s gonna talk to him? Colson?”

16. “We have no choice.”

And so on. Now, reading as you’ve requested—

NIXON: All right, fine.

FROST:—within the whole context, that is—

NIXON: Let me, let me just stop you right there. Right there. You’re doing something here which I am not doing and I will not do throughout these broadcasts. You have every right to. Ah, you were reading there out of context, ah, out of order, because I have read this and I know—

FROST: Oh, I know.

NIXON:—it really better than you do.

FROST: I’m sure you do.

NIXON: And, and I should know it better because I was there. It’s no reflection on you. You know it better than anybody else I know, incidentally, and, ah, you’re doing it very well. But I am not going to sit here and read the thing back to you. I could have notes here; as you know, I’ve participated on these broadcasts without a note in front of me. I’ve done it all from recollection. I may have made some mistakes.

FROST: No, you—

NIXON: But not many.

FROST: I…you, you certainly have done that—

Nixon tried one more defense: he might have ruminated about paying Hunt, but Hunt wanted something the president could not afford to give him, and that was clemency. So, reasoned Nixon, if clemency was not a viable option, than neither was hush money alone, and there was no reason for him to have authorized it.

NIXON: Now, let me say this, and let me say—

FROST:—and I agree with you, it’s your life we’re talking about.

NIXON:—that in this instance, that in this instance, the very last thing you read, ah, “Do you ever have any choice with Hunt?” It…why didn’t you read the next sentence? Why did you leave it off?

FROST: It carried on.

NIXON: No, no. The reason…the next sentence says, as I remember that so well, “But ya never have a choice with Hunt. Do you ever have one?” Rhetorically, you never have a choice with Hunt. Because when you finally come down to it, it gets down to clemency. Now, why after all of that horror story? And, it was, I mean, even considering that, I mean, must horrify people. Why would you consider paying money to somebody who’s blackmailing the White House? I’ve tried to give you my reasons. I was concerned about what he would do. But my point is: After that, why not? Why not do what was not done by Mr. Jaworski in his book? What was not done by Mr. Doar before the Senate Judiciary Committee? Read the last sentence. The last sentence, which says after that, “You never have any choice with Hunt, because it finally comes down to clemency.” And I said six times in that conversation, you didn’t read that in your ten things, six times I said, “You can’t provide clemency.”

FROST: No, I said—

NIXON: “It’s wrong for sure.”

FROST: No, I never said there…I never said there that you did provide clemency, nor was I talking about—

NIXON: My point is—

FROST:—but I was—

NIXON: My point is—

FROST:—all right, let me quote—

NIXON: My point is that without—

FROST:—let me quote to you, then, I’ve been through the record and I want to be totally fair, let me read to you the last quote on the transcripts that I can find about this matter then. You said, “Why didn’t I go to the last one?” I read sixteen, and I thought that was enough but…we could have read many more than that. But the last thing in the transcripts I can find about this subject was you talking on April the twentieth, and you were recollecting this meeting and you said that you said to Dean and to Haldeman, “Christ, turn over any cash we got.” That’s your recollection of the meeting on April the twentieth, when you didn’t know you were on television.

NIXON: Of course I didn’t know I was on television. On April the twentieth, it would well have been my recollection. But my point is: I wonder why, again, we haven’t followed up with what happened after the meeting. Let me tell you what happened after the meeting. And, and you were, incidentally, very fair to point out, and the record clearly shows, that Dean did not follow up in any way on this. Ah, the payment that was made—Dean didn’t know it, I didn’t know it, nobody else knew it—apparently was being made contemporaneously that day through another source.

FROST: The next…the next—

NIXON: Yeah.

FROST:—the next morning, Mitchell told Haldeman that it had been paid.

NIXON: Yeah.

FROST: And in a later transcript, ah, you agree with Haldeman that he told you. You say, “Yes. You reported that to me.”

NIXON: Yes. I understand.

FROST: Now, you were—

NIXON: Now, let me—

FROST:—you were very soon aware it had gone through.

NIXON: That’s right. But my point is: the question we have is whether or not the payment was made as a result of a direction given by the president for that purpose. And the point is: it was not. And the point is that the next morning…you talk about the conversation, and, here again, ah, you probably don’t have it on your notes here, but on the twenty-second, I raised the whole question of payments. And I said—and I’m compressing it all so we don’t take too much of our time on this—I said, “As far as these fellows in jail are concerned, you can help them for humanitarian reasons, but you can’t pay…but that Hunt thing goes too far. That’s just damn blackmail.” Now, that’s in the record. And that’s certainly an indication that it wasn’t paid.

Nixon continued to insist he had authorized no payment, even after evidence came to light that a substantial payment to the defendants’ counsel had been made on the night of March 21. It was time to confront Nixon on that transaction.

FROST: But later on that day, at some point, according to your later words to Haldeman, you were told that it had been paid.

NIXON: That…I, I agree that I was told that it had been paid. But what I am saying here is that the charge has been made that I directed it and that it was paid as a result of what I said at that meeting. That is…that charge is not true, and it’s proved by the tapes, which in so many cases can be damaging, in this case they’re helpful.

FROST: Well, there are two concerns to be said to that. One is: I think that my reading of the tapes tells me, trying to read in an open-minded way, that the writing, not just between the lines but on so many of the lines that I quoted, is very, very clear that you were, in fact, endorsing at least the short-term solution of paying this sum of money to buy time. That would be my reading of it. But the other point to be said is: here’s Dean, talking about this hush money for Hunt, talking about blackmail and all of that. I would say that you endorsed to ratify it. But let’s leave that on one side.

NIXON: I didn’t endorse or ratify it.

FROST: Why didn’t you stop it?

NIXON: Because at that point I had nothing to…no knowledge of the fact that it was going to be paid. I’d had no knowledge of the fact that, ah, the…what you have mentioned in the transcript of the next day, where Mitchell said he thought it’d “been taken care of”—I think that was what the words were or words to that effect, I wasn’t there, I didn’t…I don’t remember what he said—that was only reported to me. The point that I make is this: it’s possible it’s a mistake that I didn’t stop it. The point that I make is that I did consider it. I’ve told you that I considered it. Ah, I considered it for reasons that I thought were very good ones. Ah, I would not consider it, ah, for, ah, the other reasons, which would have been, in my view, bad ones.

After a break, Nixon returned to the set subdued and somewhat shaken. He had apparently received advice from his own staff that the hard-line approach wasn’t working and that he still had not gone far enough in conceding errors of judgment and actions that many would regard as illegal. Yet I saw no grounds to relent in my own examination of the subject, and I turned to one of the more embarrassing pieces of evidence, Nixon’s tendency to coach the Watergate suspects on how to avoid perjury and other charges.

FROST: But that night, though, the night of the twenty-first. I mean, in the conversation with Colson after you’d been exchanging dialogue about getting off the reservation and so on, Colson said to you something about the fact that “It’s the stuff after the cover-up. I don’t care about the people involved in the cover-up; it’s the stuff after that’s dangerous, Dean and other things, and the things that have been done.” And you said, as I’m sure you know, “You mean with regard to the defendants. Of course that was…that had to be done ‘brackets (laughs),’” whatever that means. But I mean, so that night you were saying that had to be done. You were realizing that doing something for the defendants was a necessity.

NIXON: No, I don’t interpret that that way at all. Ah, I, ah, I—

FROST: How do you recall it?

NIXON: I can’t recall that…I can’t recall that conversation, ah, and I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the transcription on that. Ah, but I do say—

FROST: That’s absolutely…it’s an exhibit of the Watergate trial.

NIXON:—ah, that…the statements…the tapes that have been made public, on the twenty-second, with regard to my…and the one on the twenty-first as well, ah, with regard to the whole payments problem, ah, I think are very clear with regard to my attitude.

FROST: But on the short-term point that was an exhibit and part of the basic file at the trial, was that conversation. Colson saying, “It’s the stuff after that’s dangerous.” And you saying, “You mean with regard to the defendants. Of course that was…that had to be done ‘brackets (laughs).’” I mean, that’s absolutely on the record and authenticated and played publicly.

NIXON: Well, I can’t interpret it at this time.

FROST: One of the other things that people find very difficult to take is in the Oval Office on March the twenty-first, the coaching that you gave Dean and Haldeman on how to deal with the grand jury without getting caught and saying that “Perjury’s a tough rap to prove,” as you’d said earlier, “Just be damned sure you say, ‘I don’t remember. I can’t recall.’” Is that the sort of conversation that ought to have been going on in the Oval Office, do you think?

NIXON: I think that kind of advice is proper advice for one who, as I was at that time, beginning to put myself in the position of an attorney for the defense, ah, something that I wish I hadn’t had the re—felt I had the responsibility to do. Ah, but I would like the opportunity, when the question arises, to tell you why I felt as deeply as I did on that point. Ah, every lawyer, when he talks to a witness who’s going before a grand jury, says, “Be sure that you don’t volunteer anything. Be sure if you have any questions about anything, say that you don’t recollect. Be sure that everything…that you state only the facts that you’re absolutely sure of.” Ah, now, on the other hand, I didn’t tell them to say “Don’t forget, if you do remember.” That, then, would be suborning perjury. And I did not say that.

During his desperate battle to save his presidency, Nixon claimed that he himself had sought a full accounting of Watergate from his counsel John Dean but had been frustrated by Dean’s inability or unwillingness to perform. Others too, such as Haldeman and Ehrlichman, were involved in planning this exercise which, not surprisingly, came to naught. Dean took his records to Camp David to write his report but promptly figured out that what the White House sought was a whitewash for its key personnel, with Dean going down with the ship. Small wonder he returned with only blank pages. Would Nixon now try to sell his requested investigation of evidence of his trying to get to the bottom of the scandal? Or would he concede that the internal investigation was as much of a sham as the CIA ruse and the “humanitarian” hush money business?

FROST: One of the things you repeated many times, but I suppose most memorably, or most clearly, on August the fifteenth, 1973, you said, “If anyone at the White House or high up in my campaign had been involved in wrongdoing of any kind, I wanted the White House to take the lead in making that known. On March the twenty-first, I instructed Dean to write a complete report of all that he knew on the entire Watergate matter.” Now, when one looks through the record of what had gone on just before and after March the twenty-first, on March the seventeenth, the written statement from Dean, you asked for a “self-serving goddamned statement denying culpability of principal figures.” When he told you that the original Liddy plan had involved bugging, you told him to omit that fact in his document and state it was for…the plan was for totally legal intelligence operation. On March twentieth, as I’m sure you know, you said, “You want a complete statement, but make it very incomplete.” On March the twenty-first, after his revelations to you, you say, “Understand, I don’t want to get all that goddamned specific.” And Ehrlichman and you, when you’re talking on the twenty-second and he’s talking of the Dean report, he says, “And the report says, ‘Nobody was involved.’” And there’s several other quotes to that effect. Was that the Dean report that you described? It wasn’t the same as what you described on August the fifteenth, was it?

NIXON: Well, what you’re leaving out, of course, which is in the same tape that you’ve just quoted from, is a very, very significant statement. I said that “John Dean should make a report.” And I said, we’ve…er…“We have to have a statement.” And then I went on to say, “And if it opens doors, let it open doors.” Now, with regard to the report being complete but incomplete, ah, what I meant was this—very simple—ah, I meant that he should state what he was sure of, what he knew. Because one day he would say one thing, another day he’d say something else. I didn’t want him to answer. And you’ll find that also in one of the tapes, I said, “Don’t go into every charge that has been made, ah, go into only what you know, and particularly, go in hard on the fact,” which he had consistently repeated over and over again, “No one in the White House is involved.” That’s what I wanted him to do.

FROST: But then you have a discussion in the meeting with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, um, where you’re deciding what the policy’s going to be. “Is it going to be a hang-out, i.e., is it going to be the whole of the truth?” And in the end, it’s decided that it’s going to be one of the great phrases of Watergate: “A modified, limited hang-out.” Which is why I suggest the other quotes that I’ve quoted to you are decisive. And then Ehrlichman goes on to say, “I’m looking at the future.” And he says, “Now, we already know it’s a modified, limited hang-out.” And you can’t have a modified, limited version of the truth. I mean, it’s obviously not going to be the whole of the truth. “I am looking at the future; assuming some corner of this thing comes unstuck at some time, you”—that’s you—“are in a position to say, ‘Look, that document I’ve published is a document I relied on, that is the report I relied on.’” And, you respond, “That’s right.” Now you’ve decided the document’s going to be modified; it’s going to be limited and then you’re going to rely on that document and so you’re going to be able to blame it on Dean. And it seems to me that that is consistent with all the quotes that I have quoted and not the “open door quote” that you have quoted.

NIXON: That’s your opinion, and I have my opinion. Dean was sent to write a report. He worked on it, ah, and, ah, he certainly would have remembered, ah, ah, a phrase that was, let me say, ah, a lot more easy to understand than “modified hang-out” or whatever Ehrlichman said. Ah, he would have remembered, “If it opens doors, it opens doors.” I meant by that I was prepared to hear the worst as well as the good.

FROST: What I don’t understand about March the twenty-first is that I still don’t know why you didn’t pick up the phone and tell the cops. I still don’t know when you found out about the things that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had done, that there was no evidence anywhere of a rebuke, but only of scenarios and excuses, et cetera. Nowhere do you say, “We must get this information direct to—” whoever it is, the head of the Justice Department, criminal investigation, or whatever. And nowhere do you say to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, “This is disgraceful conduct”—and Haldeman admits a lot of it the next day, so you’re not relying on Dean—“you’re fired.”

NIXON: Well, could I take my time now to, to, ah, to address that question?

FROST: Mm.

NIXON: Ah, I think it will be very, ah, useful to you to know what I, what I was going through. Ah, it wasn’t a very easy time. Ah, ah, I think, ah, my daughter once said that, ah, “There really wasn’t a happy time in the White House, except in a personal sense, after April 30, when Haldeman and Ehrlichman left.” You know, it’s rather difficult to tell you, four years later, how you felt. But I think you’d like to know. Something new. You see, I had been through a very difficult period when President Eisenhower had the Adams problem, and I’ll never forget the agony he went through. Here was Adams; a man that had gone through the heart attack with him; a man that had gone through the stroke with him; a man that had gone through the ileitis with him; a man who had been totally selfless…but he was caught up in a web; ah, guilty? I don’t know. I considered Adams then to be an honest man in his heart; ah, he did have some misjudgment, but, in any event, ah, finally Eisenhower decided, after months of indecision on it—and he stood up for him in press conferences over and over again, and Haggarty did—he decided he had to go. You know who did it? I did it.

Eisenhower called me in and asked me to talk to Sherm. And so here was the situation I was faced with: Who’s going to talk to these men? What can we do about it? Well, first let me say that I didn’t have anybody that could talk to them but me. I couldn’t have Agnew talk to them because they didn’t get along well with him. Bill Rogers wasn’t happy with them either, and so, not having a vice president or anybody else and Haldeman, my chief of staff, himself being one involved, the only man that could talk to them was me.

Now, when I did talk to them, it was one of the most, ah, I would say difficult periods, heartrending—hard to use the adjectives that are adequate—experiences of my life. I’ll never forget when I heard that, on April fifteenth from Henry Petersen, that they ought to resign and Klein-dienst thought they ought to resign, and it took me two weeks…I frankly agreed, incidentally, in my own mind, that they had to go on the basis of the evidence that had been presented. Ah, but I didn’t tell them that at that point. When I say, “I agreed with it.” I didn’t fully reach that conclusion because I still wanted to give them a chance to survive. I didn’t want to have them sacked as Eisenhower sacked Adams and then have…and Adams goes off to New Hampshire and runs a ski lodge and is never prosecuted for anything; sacked because of misjudgment, yes, ah, mistakes, yes, ah, but, ah, an illegal act, ah, with an immoral, illegal motive? No. That’s what I feel about Adams, and that’s the way I felt about these men at the time.

Now, let me tell you what happened. I remember Henry Petersen coming in on that Sunday afternoon. He came in off his boat. He apologized for being in his sneakers and a pair of blue jeans and so forth, but it was very important to give me the update on what had…the developments that had occurred up to April 15. And he said…he gave me a piece of paper indicating that they had knowledge of Haldeman’s participation and the $350,000, and they had knowledge of Ehrlichman’s participation in ordering or…they indicated that Ehrlichman had told Hunt to deep…ah, the, ah, Gray to deep-six—

FROST: Six.

NIXON:—some papers and so forth and so on. And he said, “Mr. President, these men have got to resign. You’ve got to fire ’em.” And I said to him, I said, “But, Henry, I can’t fire men simply on the basis of charges, ah, they’ve gotta have their day in court. Ah, they’ve gotta have a chance to prove their innocence. I’ve gotta see more than this because they claim that they’re not guilty.” And Henry Petersen, very uncharacteristically—because he’s a very respectful, a Democrat, career civil service, splendid man—sat back in his chair, and he said, “You know, Mr. President, what you’ve just said—that you can’t fire a man simply on the basis of charges that have been made and the fact that they…their continued service will be embarrassing to you, you’ve gotta have proof before you do that.” He said, “That speaks very well for you as a man. It doesn’t speak well for you as a president.” And, in retrospect, I guess he was right. So, it took me two weeks to work it out, tortuous long sessions. You’ve got hours and hours of talks with them, which they resisted. We don’t need to go through all that agony. And I remember the day at Camp David when they came up. Haldeman came in first; he’s standing as he usually does, not a Germanic Nazi storm trooper but just a decent, respected crew-cut guy. That’s the way Haldeman was, a splendid man. And, ah, he says, “I disagree with your decision totally.” He said, “I think it’s going to eventually…you’re going to live to regret it. But I will.” Ehrlichman then came in. I knew that Ehrlichman was bitter because he felt very strongly he shouldn’t resign. Although he’d even indicated that Haldeman should go and maybe he should stay. And I took Ehrlichman out on the porch at Aspen, you’ve never been to Aspen, I suppose? That’s the presidential cabin at Camp David, and it was springtime. The tulips had just come out. I’ll never forget, we looked out across…it was one of those gorgeous days when, you know, no clouds were on the mountain. And I was pretty emotionally wrought up and I remember that I could just hardly bring myself to tell Ehrlichman that he had to go because I knew that he was going to resist it. I said, “You know, John, when I went to bed last night,” I said, “I hoped, I almost prayed I wouldn’t wake up this morning.” Well, it was an emotional moment, I think there were tears in our eyes, both of us. He said, “Don’t say that.” We went back in. They agreed to leave as it was late, but I did it. I cut off one arm and then cut off the other arm. Now, I can be faulted, I recognize it. Maybe I defended them too long; maybe I tried to help them too much. But I was concerned about them. I was concerned about their families. I felt that they, in their hearts, felt they were not guilty. I felt they ought to have a chance at least to prove that they were not guilty, and I didn’t want to be in the position of just sawing them off in that way. And, I suppose you could sum it all up the way one of your British prime ministers summed it up, Gladstone, when he said that “The first requirement for a prime minister is to be a good butcher.” Well, I think the great story, as far as a summary of Watergate is concerned, I did some of the big things rather well. I screwed up terribly in what was a little thing and became a big thing, but I will have to admit, I wasn’t a good butcher.

FROST: Would you go further than “mistakes”? That, you’ve explained how you got caught up in this thing…you’ve explained your motives. I don’t want to quibble about any of that, but just coming to the sheer substance, would you go further than “mistakes”? The word that seems not enough for people to understand.

NIXON: Well, what would you express?

This is the heart-stopping moment to which I referred earlier.

FROST: My goodness, that’s a…I think that there are three things, since you asked me, I would like to hear you say, I think the American people would like to hear you say. One is “There was probably more than mistakes, there was wrongdoing.” Whether it was a crime or not? Yes, it may have been a crime too. Secondly, “I did…” and I’m saying this without questioning the motives, right, “I did abuse the power I had as president, or not fulfil the totality of the oath of office.” That’s the second thing. And thirdly, “I put the American people through two years of needless agony, and I apologize for that.” And I say that you’ve explained your motives. I think those are the categories. And I know how difficult it is for anyone, and most of all you, but I think that people need to hear it, and I think, unless you say it, you’re going to be haunted for the rest of your life.

NIXON: I well remember that when I let Haldeman and Ehrlichman know that they were to resign, that I had Ray Price bring in the final draft of the speech that I was to make the next night. And I said to him, “Ray,” I said, “if you think I oughta resign,” I said, “put that in too because I feel responsible.” Even though I did not feel that I had engaged in these activities consciously. Ah, insofar as the knowledge of or participation in the break-in; the approval of hush money; the approval of, ah, clemency, et cetera. The various charges that have been made. Well, he didn’t put it in. And I must say that, at the time, I seriously considered whether I shouldn’t resign. But on the other hand, I feel that I owe it to history to point out that, from that time on April 30 until I resigned on August 9, I did some things that were good for this country. We had the second and third summits. I think one of the major reasons I stayed in office was my concern about keeping the China initiative, the Soviet initiative, the Vietnam fragile peace agreement, and the added dividend, the first breakthrough in moving toward not love but at least not war in the Middle East.

FROST: You’ve—

NIXON: And now, coming back to the whole point of, ah, whether I should have resigned then and how I feel now. Let me say, I…I just didn’t make mistakes in this period. I think some of my mistakes that I regret most deeply came with the statements that I made afterwards. Ah, some of those statements ah, were misleading, ah, I notice, for example, the editor to The Washington Post, the managing editor, Ben Bradlee, wrote a couple, three months ago, something to the effect that, as far as his newspaper was concerned, he said, “We don’t print the truth. We print what we know. We print what people tell us and this means that we print lies.”

Ah, I would say that the statements that I made afterwards were, on the big issues, true. That I was not involved in the matters that I have spoken to you about; not involved in the break-in; that I did not engage in the…and participate in, or approve, the payment of money or the authorization of clemency, which of course were the essential elements of the cover-up. That was true. Ah, but the statements were misleading in exaggerating that enormous political attack I was under. It was a five-front war with a fifth column, ah, ah, I had a partisan Senate committee staff. We had a partisan, ah, special prosecutor staff; we had a partisan media; we had a partisan Judiciary Committee staff in the fifth column. Now, under all these circumstances, my reactions in some of the statements and press conferences and so forth after that, I want to say right here and now, I said things that were not true. Most of them were fundamentally true on the big issues but without going as far as I should have gone and saying perhaps that I had considered other things but had not done them.

FROST: Well…you mean that—

NIXON: And for all those things I have a very deep regret.

FROST: You got caught up in something—

NIXON: Yeah.

FROST:—and then it snowballed—

I could feel myself draining emotionally, and I could see that Nixon was grappling with his own deepest feelings.

NIXON: It snowballed. And it was my fault. I’m not blaming anybody else. I’m simply saying to you that, as far as I’m concerned, I not only regret it—I indicated my own beliefs in this matter when I resigned. People didn’t think it was enough to admit mistakes, fine. If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor, no. Never. Ah, because I don’t believe I should. On the other hand, there are some friends who say, “Just face them down. There is a conspiracy to get you.” There may have been. I don’t know what the CIA had to do. Some of their shenanigans have yet to be told, according to a book I read recently. Ah, I don’t know what was going on in some Republican, some Democratic circles, as far as the so-called impeachment lobby was concerned. However, I don’t go with the idea that there…that what brought me down was a coup; a conspiracy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ah, I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I’d been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

FROST: But what I’m really saying is that in addition to the untrue statements that you’ve mentioned, could you just say, with conviction I mean, not because I want you to say it, that you did do some covering up? We’re not talking legalistically now, I just want the facts. I mean, that you did do some covering up? That there were a series of times when, maybe overwhelmed by your loyalties or whatever else, but as you look back at the record, you behaved partially protecting your friends, or maybe yourself, and that, in fact, you were, to put it at its most simple, a part of a cover-up at times?

NIXON: No, I…I again, I again respectfully will not quibble with you about the use of the terms. However, before using the term, I think it’s very important for me to make clear what I did not and what I did do. And then I will answer your question quite directly. Ah, I did not, ah, in the first place, ah, commit a…the crime of obstruction of justice. Because I did not have the motive required for the commission of that crime.

FROST: We’ve had our discussion on that, and we disagree on that, but that’s—

NIXON: The lawyers can argue that. I did not commit, in my view, an impeachable offense. Now, the House has ruled overwhelmingly that I did, ah, of course, that was only an indictment and would have to be tried in the Senate—I might have won, I might have lost—but even if I’d won in the Senate by a vote or two, I would have been crippled and the…in any event, for six months the country couldn’t afford having the president in the dock in the United States Senate, and there can never be an impeachment in the future in this country without voluntarily impeaching himself. I have impeached myself. That speaks for itself.

FROST: How do you mean, “I have impeached myself”?

NIXON: By resigning. That was a voluntary impeachment. And, ah, now what does that mean in terms of whether I, ah…you’re wanting me to say that I am…participated in an illegal cover-up? No. Now, when you come to the period—and this is the critical period—that when you come to the period of March 21 on, when Dean gave his legal opinion, ah, that certain things, actions taken by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, et cetera, and even by himself, amounted to a legal cover-up and so forth, then I was in a very different position, and, during that period, I will admit that I started acting as lawyer for their defense. I will admit that acting as lawyer for their defense, I was not prosecuting the case. I will admit that during that period, rather than acting primarily in my role as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States of America, or at least with responsibility for the law enforcement, because the attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer, but as the one with the chief responsibility for seeing that the laws of the United States are enforced, that I did not meet that responsibility.

I could not imagine Nixon going any further than he had to this moment. But I was wrong.

NIXON: And to the extent that I did not meet that responsibility, to the extent that, within the law and in some cases going right to the edge of the law in trying to advise Ehrlichman and Haldeman and all the rest as to how best to present their cases because I thought they were legally innocent, that I came to the edge, and, under the circumstances, I would have to say that a reasonable person could call that a cover-up. I didn’t think of it as a cover-up. I didn’t intend it to cover up. Let me say, if I’d intended to cover up, believe me, I’d have done it. You know how I could have done it so easily? I could have done it immediately after the election simply by giving clemency to everybody and the whole thing would have gone away. I couldn’t do that because I said, “Clemency is wrong.”

But now we come down to the key point. And let me answer it in my own way about “How do I feel about the American people?” I mean, ah, how, ah, whether I should have resigned earlier or what I should say to them now. Well, that forces me to rationalize now and give you a carefully prepared and cropped statement. I didn’t expect this question, frankly, though, so I’m not going to give you that, but I can tell you this—

FROST: Nor did I.

NIXON:—I can tell you this: I think I said it all in one of those moments that you’re not thinking. Sometimes you say the things that are really in your heart. When you’re thinking in advance, then you say things you know are tailored to the audience. I had a lot of difficult meetings those last days before I resigned, and the most difficult one, and the only one where I broke into tears, frankly, except for that very brief session with Ehrlichman up at Camp David, it was the first time I had cried since Eisenhower died. I met with all of my key supporters just a half hour before going on television. For twenty-five minutes, we all sat around in the Oval Office; men that I’d come to Congress with; Democrats and Republicans, about half and half, wonderful men. And, at the very end, after saying, “Well, thank you for all your support during these tough years. Thank you for the, particularly for what you’ve done to help us end the draft and bring home the POWs and have a chance for building a generation of peace”—which I could see the dream that I had possibly being shattered—“and thank you for your friendship, little acts of friendship over the years….” You know, you sort of remember, you know, with a birthday card and the rest. Then, suddenly, you haven’t got much more to say, and half the people around the table were crying. Les Aarons, Illinois, bless him, he was shaking, sobbing, and, ah, I get…just can’t stand seeing somebody else cry, and that ended it for me. And I just, well, I must say I sort of cracked up, started to cry, pushed my chair back, and then I blurted it out, I said, “I’m sorry. I just hope I haven’t let you down.”

Well, when I said, “I just hope I haven’t let you down,” that said it all.

I had.

I let down my friends.

I let down the country.

I let down our system of government and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but think it’s all too corrupt and the rest.

Most of all, I let down an opportunity that I would have had for two and a half more years to proceed to great projects and programs for building a lasting peace, which has been my dream, as you know from our first interview in 1968, before I had any thought I might even win that year. (I didn’t tell you I didn’t think I might win, but I wasn’t sure.)

Yep, I…I, I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.

My political life is over.

I will never yet, and never again, have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time.

And so, I can only say that, in answer to your question, that while technically I did not commit a crime, an impeachable offense—these are legalisms.

As far as the handling of this matter is concerned, it was so botched up.

I made so many bad judgments. The worst ones, mistakes of the heart, rather than the head, as I pointed out.

But let me say, a man in that top judge…top job, he’s gotta have a heart.

But his head must always rule his heart.

It was at this point that our broadcast interview ended. Nixon had traveled a long and circuitous route from denial and defiance to acceptance and admission. As both his staff and mine predicted, the sight of a contrite, non-threatening Nixon was balm to the political community, which gradually over the ensuing years accepted the return of its prodigal son to membership in goodish standing. But Richard Nixon himself was not expecting anything of the sort…

FROST: I think you’ve said it all, really. The, you’re saying, if I understand it right, Mr. President, you said, “It’s a burden that you’ve got to carry with you for the rest of your life.” I think it may be a little, a little lighter after what you’ve said and—

NIXON: I doubt it. I remember very well, ah…the night before I resigned, Eddie Cox, a wonderful young man, Tricia’s husband, you know, sort of Princeton and on the tennis team and fine family in New York and all the rest, good lawyer, one of the great law firms in New York, God, I wish we’d had him in the White House, had he been old enough at the time. And I said, “Well, at least”—and I knew this wasn’t true, but I was just giving him as the devil’s advocate, the proposition—I said, “Well, at least, Ed,” he knew I’d made the decision, “this cuts it off. We’ll go out to California and they’ll leave us alone.” I’ve never seen him…he’s a very well-contained boy, he said, “Look, oh, no, they won’t.” He said, “You don’t know these people.” He says, “I know them.” What he was speaking of was the staff of the special prosecutor, Mr. Jaworski’s staff. As a matter of fact, Mr. Jaworski told Al Haig on several occasions that he inherited from Archibald Cox a lot of hot rods who were pushing for things that he thought went too far and that he just couldn’t control ’em.

But, be that as it may, Ed said, “Let me tell you something about ’em. I worked in the U.S. attorney’s”—and, incidentally, he had also worked for Ralph Nader, so he’s had a pretty good experience—but “I worked in the U.S. attorney’s district…office in New York. I went to school, with these…some of these people at the Harvard Law School, and I know something about ’em. They’re tough; they’re smart. But, most of all, they hate you with a passion. Mostly because of the war, and some because of other reasons. And, they and others like them and the press, they’re going to hound you, they’re going to harass you for the rest of your life.” And as we conclude this, I can say they have and they will, and I will take it, I hope, like a man.