by Tim Weiner
“He got kicked in the teeth”: Dec. 20, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I just came from the President” … “This is a helluva way to run a war”: Dec. 22–25, 1972, entries in Moorer Diary.
“Moorer is preparing a big strike”: Dec. 23, 1972, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“This is December 24, 1972”: Dec. 24, 1972, entry in President’s Daily Diary.
“I’ve just lived through the most terrifying hour of my life”: Dec. 27, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Never!” … “At great cost”: Ibid.
“We gave them a hell of a good bang”: Ibid.
“swallowed the hook”: Dec. 28, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.
“Colson could be in some real soup” … “undeniable specifics”: Jan. 3, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Gordon Strachan”: Smith oral history, FAOH.
“Colson told me”: Nixon, RN, p. 745.
“I know it’s tough for all of you”: Jan. 8, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“at an end” … “the way in which we use these years”: Nixon, RN, pp. 746–51.
21: “You could get a million dollars”
“After the cease-fire”: Jan. 23, 1973, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Whack the hell out of them”: March 7, 1973, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“We have a stick and a carrot”: Jan. 30, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Here’s the judge saying I did this”: Feb. 3, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“all other illegal, improper, or unethical conduct”: Senate Resolution 60, 93rd Cong. (1973–74), adopted unanimously, Feb. 7, 1973.
“We should play a hard game” … “not to let this thing run away with us”: Feb. 9–11, 1973, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“one that really had R.N. tattooed on him”: Helms interview with Stanley I. Kutler, July 14, 1988, Box 15, Folder 16, Wisconsin Historical Archives, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI; cited with the kind permission of Professor Kutler.
“We would like to be able to put the DOD”: Memorandum of conversation: President Nixon, Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Feb. 15, 1973, FRUS XXXV: National Security Policy, 1973–1976.
“the most serious blunder”: OPE Analysis, July 5, 1974, FBI Watergate Investigation.
“Would it hurt or help” … “We have got to get them”: Feb. 16, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I must have scared him to death”: Feb. 23, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“This judge may go off the deep end”: Feb. 28, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“For Christ’s sake”: March 1, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Of course” said the president: Nixon press conference, March 2, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“morphed into a mini-Watergate” … “totally disenchanted”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, p. 263.
“the continuing financial activity” … “No problem”: March 2, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I am aware of what you’re doing”: March 7, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office. The presence of Pappas in the Oval Office is noted in the White House logs. But Nixon told his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, “I don’t want to have anything indicating that I was thanking him for raising money for the Watergate defendants.”
“I’ll fire the whole goddamn Bureau”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Give them a lot of gobble-de-gook”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“only if it’s against the government”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Mr. Dean is Counsel to the White House” … “Members of the White House staff will not appear”: The President’s News Conference, March 15, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“There are some questions you can’t answer”: March 16, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Then you get into a real mess” … “We can’t do it”: Ibid.
“I realize the problems of being too specific”: March 16, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“I think what you’ve got to do, John”: March 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Is the Greek bearing gifts?”: Dean repeated this conversational gem to Nixon during his “cancer on the presidency” soliloquy on March 21 and included it in his post-Watergate memoir Blind Ambition: The White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), p. 198.
“This is going to break this case”: John J. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes, the Conspirators, the Pardon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), pp. 91–115.
“Future historians”: Richard Kleindienst, Justice: The Memoirs of an Attorney General (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1985), p. 155.
“The only threat to the world’s freedom” … “We are the force for peace”: March 20, 1973, NWHT, Cabinet Room.
“I have the impression that you don’t know everything” … “It’s better to fight it out”: March 21, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I would have to conclude that that probably is correct, yes, sir”: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary on the Nomination of Louis Patrick Gray III, 93rd Cong. (March 22, 1973).
“Gray is dead”: March 22, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I don’t give a shit what happens”: March 22, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“The courtroom exploded”: Samuel Dash, Chief Counsel (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 30.
“The problem is” … “back to Washington”: March 24–26, 1973, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“A committee of Congress”: March 27, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“it isn’t going to get any better”: March 30, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Just remember” … “one foot outside it”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, p. 363.
22: “Vietnam had found its successor”
“Vietnam had found its successor”: Nixon, RN, p. 783.
“that’s the ball game”: April 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Question: Is Hunt prepared to talk?”: April 14, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I’m going to plead guilty”: Magruder transcript, April 14, 1973, Book 4, Statement of Information, House Judiciary Committee, p. 709.
“The first one I talked to was your predecessor”: Kleindienst, Justice, pp. 159–60.This is a verbatim transcript of a conversation tape-recorded by John Ehrlichman on April 14, 1973, and seized by the FBI and Watergate prosecutors roughly three weeks thereafter.
“It is a privilege to be here”: Nixon remarks at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, April 14, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“I didn’t sleep but I did weep”: Kleindienst, Justice, p. 161.
“What you have said, Mr. President”: Nixon, RN, p. 827.
“Clearly he had been drinking”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, pp. 415–16.
“What the hell am I going to do?”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 238.
“Everyone’s in the middle of this, John”: April 16, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The FBI has just served a subpoena”: April 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“intensive new inquiries”: Nixon remarks announcing procedures and developments in connection with the Watergate investigations, April 17, 1973. Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“throwing myself on the sword”: Ibid.
“If matters are not handled adroitly”: April 25, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“I had never seen the President so agitated.… He was extremely bitter”: William D. Ruckelshaus, “Remembering Watergate,” speech before the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Seattle, WA, Oct. 3, 2009.
“I don’t think it should ever get out”: April 26, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“What the hell” … “get it done, done”: April 28, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“respectable Republican cloth coat”: The “Checkers Speech” transcript is among the Public Papers of Richard Nixon at ht
tp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24485.
“He looked small and drawn”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 390.
“The P was in terrible shape”: April 29, 1973, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“I followed my mother’s custom”: Nixon, RN, p. 847.
“an increasingly desperate search”: Ibid., p. 850.
“Goddamn it”: April 30, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“You’re the Cabinet now, boy”: Ibid.
“Still no cease-fire”: NSC memorandum to Kissinger, May 9, 1973, “SUBJECT: Bunker Assessment of Vietnam Cease-Fire at X plus 90.”
“Listen,” she said: Lowenstein oral history, FAOH.
“Presidency had been so weakened”: Stearman oral history, FAOH.
“It was the President’s wish”: Memorandum for the record, Vernon Walters, CIA, June 28, 1972.
“It will be very embarrassing”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David.
“If you read the cold print”: May 12, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“One of the things”: Nixon, RN, p. 870.
“Henry ordered the whole goddamn thing”: May 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Doesn’t the President of the United States”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“Bullshit”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David.
“a dangerous game we were playing”: FBI special agent Nick Stames’s interview with John N. Mitchell, May 11, 1973, FBI/FOIA.
“An FBI agent”: Ruckelshaus speech to National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Oct. 3, 2009.
“Good god”: May 12, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“the national security thing” … “son of a bitch”: May 20, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“The bad thing is that the president approved burglaries”: May 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“If we allow ourselves”: May 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“He’s thinking of you”: Ibid.
23: “The President of the United States can never admit that”
“the grave, difficult and delicate issues”: Nomination of Archibald Cox, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st Sess. (May 21, 1973), p. 143.
“the partisan viper”: Nixon, RN, p. 929.
“The balance between the three branches”: William Green Miller oral history, FAOH. Miller continued: “The balance in foreign affairs, defense and secret activities had tilted way over to a predominance by the Executive. This is the reason for war powers debate, and the War Powers Act, the struggle about treaty making, about who makes war, the efforts to limit the scope of executive orders, and deep inquiries into what actions require Senate ratification, the extent to which the legislature, the courts and the public should have access to information, including every aspect of intelligence. All of this ferment is from the same tapestry, the Gulf of Tonkin being the beginning, the first big lie that really bothered and shook the foundations of acceptable consensus between the White House and the legislature.”
“Watergate is the bursting of the boil”: Fulbright quoted in John W. Finney, “Cambodia: The House Gets Tough,” New York Times, May 13, 1973. The financial trickery the Pentagon used to evade congressional restrictions on financing the war in Vietnam was extraordinary. “The Nixon Administration had utilized every possible way to keep things going,” remembered Sen. Charles Mathias, a Maryland Republican. In 1972, “Mel Laird, who was then Secretary of Defense, exhumed a Food and Forage Act, which was a relic from the 19th century, which provided that when a cavalry commander got out beyond his normal source of supply, he could go to farmers and make a commitment that they would be paid for the hay that he would impound for his horses. Mel used the authority of the Food and Forage Act to get credit to keep going in Vietnam.… I think the mood developed in Congress that you just had to cut everything off because there were no halfway measures that would be effective” (Mathias oral history, FAOH).
“The Founding Fathers”: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (hereinafter Senate Watergate Committee), May 17, 1973.
“That could never happen here”: Odle testimony, Senate Watergate Committee, May 17, 1973.
“The problem in Southeast Asia”: Memorandum of conversation [notes by Maj. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs], May 18, 1973, Washington, DC, FRUS XXXVIII: Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1973–1976.
“he had a very important message”: Caulfield testimony, Senate Watergate Committee, May 22, 1973.
“‘I ordered that they use any means necessary’”: May 23, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“There’s going to be a full-blown war”: Joseph B. Treaster, “U.S. Forces Out of Vietnam; Hanoi Frees the Last P.O.W.,” New York Times, March 29, 1973.
“There was no plan to end the war”: May 24, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“Wouldn’t it be better for the country”: May 25, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“so that we can strategize”: June 4, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“a tape of a conversation”: June 6, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I have no tapes”: June 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“It’s almost a miracle”: June 12, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We must recognize”: June 18, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I think that I still have the record”: Schlesinger Oral History Interview, Dec. 10, 2007, Nixon Presidential Library.
“we would never recover”: Nixon, RN, p. 893.
“I thought to myself” … “‘Nixon taped all of his conversations’”: 2012 Chapman Law Review Symposium, 2012, “The 40th Anniversary of Watergate: A Commemoration of the Rule of Law,” Chapman Law Review 16 (Spring 2012).
“Should have destroyed the tapes”: Nixon, RN, pp. 901–4.
“The time has come to turn Watergate over to the courts” … “the conduct of this great office”: Nixon address to the nation about the Watergate investigations, Aug. 15, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
24: “The same enemies”
“Let others wallow in Watergate”: Nixon remarks to members of the White House staff on returning from Bethesda Naval Hospital, White House Press Office, July 20, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“I’m going to hit them”: June 13, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“We’ve been at this for four years”: June 2, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“As you are well aware”: June 3, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
All testimony from Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell quoted in this chapter is taken from the printed records of the Senate Watergate Committee.
“Now that we have disposed”: Richardson affidavit, June 17, 1974, statement of information to House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry, Book XI.
“We’ve got an even worse problem than Agnew”: Ruckelshaus, “Remembering Watergate.”
“The President all along intended” … “the order discharging Cox”: Ibid.
“I’m going to go home to read”: These words were reported in newspapers around the world. “Whether we shall continue” and Doyle’s remark are in James Doyle, Not Above the Law (New York: William Morrow, 1977), pp. 197–200.
“All our intelligence said”: Minutes of a Cabinet meeting, Oct. 18, 1973, Washington, DC, in FRUS XXXVIII: Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy.
“The switchboard just got a call from 10 Downing Street”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Scowcroft, 7:55 p.m., Oct. 11, 1973, Washington, DC, in FRUS XXV: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973.
“If you don’t do something”: Armstrong oral history, FAOH.
“The Soviets were shipping warheads”: Ransom oral history, FAOH.
“Nixon was in his family quarters”: Sonnenfeldt oral history, FAOH.
“The Brezhnev letter” … “what do we do?”: Moorer Diaries; CJCS Memo M-88-73, “
SUBJ: NSC/JCS Meeting, Wednesday/Thursday, 24/25 October 1973,” FRUS XXV: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War.
“One of the things that I recall”: Eagleburger oral history, FAOH.
“A government of laws”: Elliot Richardson, The Creative Balance (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), pp. 46–47.
“to kill the President”: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 581.
“You are absolutely free…?”: Hearings, Special Prosecutor, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Cong. 1st Sess., p. 570.
“a wild hare” and “Nixon lied to me”: Saxbe oral history, Nixon Library.
“I for the first time realized”: Jaworski oral history, Baylor University, Waco, TX. Online at http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/buioh/id/1591.
“The answer—fight”: Nixon, RN, p. 970.
25: United States v. Richard Milhous Nixon
“Above all else”: Nixon, RN, p. 971.
“the so-called Watergate affair”: State of the Union Address, Jan. 30, 1974.
“The biggest danger” … “the way he really feels”: Nixon, RN, pp. 975–76.
“I meant that the whole transaction was wrong”: The president’s news conference, March 6, 1974.
“It is almost like we have a death wish”: March 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“all the additional evidence”: The President’s Address to the Nation, April 29, 1974.
“Deplorable, disgusting, shabby, immoral”: Scott quoted in Christopher Lydon, “Senator Brands Conduct as ‘Immoral,’” New York Times, May 8, 1974.
“The great tragedy”: Nixon, RN, p. 1007.
“He came out to greet Chancellor Kreisky”: White oral history, FAOH.
“The Egyptians, as I saw”: Houghton oral history, FAOH.
“Wasn’t that Nixon…?”: Nixon, RN, p. 1013.
“He stopped being the Secretary of State”: Saunders oral history, FAOH.
“Who was going to be”: Suddarth oral history, FAOH.
“a face carved out of wood”: Goodby oral history, FAOH.
“My god, he really thinks”: June 19, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“SALT—this is the most difficult”: Memorandum of conversation, June 28, 1974, Moscow, FRUS XV: Soviet Union, June 1972–August 1974.
“We suggest that the U.S.”: Memorandum of conversation, June 30, 1974, Oreanda, FRUS XV: Soviet Union.