Nixon Haig Set Up Dean as Watergate Fall Guy May 12 1973

On this conversation between Nixon and Vice Chief of Staff Al Haig, they look into whether they're able to set up John Dean as the man who put into action the Watergate break-in and the cover-up on his own. This conversation immediately follows this other conversation between Nixon and Haig, where they look into allegations that the White House tried to stop the FBI from investigating the break-in because of CIA ties to the burglars.

Introduction and transcript taken from Stanley Kutler's Abuse of Power.

Audio file can be found at this URL:
http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape165/165-021.mp3

Audio accompanied by transcript is on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FHekamNFcQ

MAY 12, 1973: THE PRESIDENT AND HAIG, 12:59-1:03 P.M.,
WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

Now that Buzhardt amd Haig are convinced of Haldeman's and Ehrlichman's criminal involvement, Nixon looks to link Dean and make him the primary culprit in the cover-up.

NIXON
Oh, Al. One other thing. Refresh my memory: Dean was not present at that meeting now, was he?

HAIG
No, no, he was not.

NIXON
That was good. And he has no memcom? I mean, he has none - he doesn't have -

HAIG
He was not there...But what he would have would be contacts with John [Ehrlichman] subsequent to it...And there is reference to it in his contact with Walters. He said "in conjunction with your meeting yesterday, I've got to talk to you, and you can call John Ehrlichman if you want to check on that" - which Walters did, and John said go ahead and see him...

NIXON
...But on the other hand, that would have again been - I'm just trying to put our face on it. The normal procedure, Dean was in charge of the Goddamn investigation for us.

HAIG
Exactly right.

NIXON
And so he said, talk to Walters about the thing.

HAIG
Exactly. And that's why-

NIXON
Dean, of course, he may go out and say, Ehrlichman told him to keep this thing under the hat and all that sort of thing, right?

HAIG
That's right, that's right.

NIXON
He's not going to be believed. I mean...that would be Dean versus Ehrlichman...And Walters's conversations with Dean you say are, his memcoms on that are - well, which is important, not on these memcoms because that's all Dean could know - are clean.

HAIG
Very helpful and very clean.

NIXON
Why are they helpful? You mean-

HAIG
Helpful in the context that here was the real bad guy that was putting the wrong kind of twist into it, and the fact that he couldn't ever - you see, if he had had presidential authority-

NIXON
Yeah.

HAIG
-when he got continually stymied, God, he would have been used it ten times over.

NIXON
And Walters kept saying, I would have to have presidential authority.

HAIG
Well, he kept saying: Look, you're trying to drag the presidency into a matter to resolve staff incompetence, and you can't do that...