The portions of the transcripts that appear to bear most directly on the President's guilt or innocence are excerpted in chronological order, with comment and annotation, on these and the following pages. As Nixon said, many of these words are ambiguous, but many of them are less so than the White House has tried to depict them.
How they are judged by the Congress and the American people may well determine Nixon's survival in office. The White House transcripts, often unpunctuated and containing spelling and other errors, are reproduced here as they were issued, in a distinctive typeface for ready recognition. Where a part of a spoken sentence has been omitted for space reasons, the omission is indicated by three dots ... and where whole sequences of dialogue have been deleted for compression purposes, the gap is indicated by a square ∎.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1972, 5:27 P.M.
The Oval Office. Present: the President (P), H.R. Haldeman (H) and John Dean (D).
In the morning, a federal grand jury had indicted the five Watergate burglars along with Nixon Re-Election Committee Lawyer G. Gordon Liddy and White House Consultant E. Howard Hunt Jr.
P: Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way didn't you?
D: We tried.
H: How did it all end up?
D: Ah, I think we can say well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expect.
H: Whitewash?
D: No, not yet—the story right now—
P: It is a big story.
H: Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that.
D: Plus two White House fellows [Liddy and Hunt].
H: That is good, that takes the edge off whitewash really, that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were big men. Maybe that is good.
P: Just remember, all the trouble we're taking, we'll have a chance to get back one day ...
The talk is interrupted by a call to the President from John Mitchell in New York. Nixon tells his former Attorney General that "this thing is just one of those side issues and a month later everybody looks back and wonders what all the shooting was about." Then the discussion resumes.
D: Three months ago I would have had trouble predicting there would be a day when this would be forgotten, but I think I can say that 54 days from now [Election Day], nothing is going to come crashing down to our surprise.
This assurance contrasts with Dean's later testimony before the Senate Watergate committee when he said that he had warned the President at the Sept. 15 meeting that "there was a long way to go before this matter would end."
P: Oh well, this is a can of worms as you know a lot of this stuff that went on. And the people who worked this way are awfully embarrassed. But the way you have handled all this seems to me has been very skillful putting your fingers in the leaks that have sprung here and there ...
It is one of the "ambiguities" that could be misconstrued. Dean has testified that he assumed that
Nixon was congratulating him on succeeding in "containing" the case to the seven through the illegal coverup.
P: We are all in it together. This is a war. We take a few shots and it will be over. Don't