John Ehrlichman Interviews John Mitchell April 14 1973

The grand jury is meeting on whether to indict John Mitchell, Nixon's friend, former attorney general and head of his re-election committee, for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal.

Nixon's top aide, John Ehrlichman, now meets with Mitchell to find out what he knows and what he's going to say to prosecutors. Points of conversation include knowledge of the initial break-in, the cover-up, the hush money, and other assorted incidents. There was an effort to keep the lid on a number of things, says Mitchell in one moment. Things, he adds, "that would have even been worse, I think, than the Watergate business."

Audio file for this conversation is at the Miller Center (transcript of the audio featured here, leaving out ambient noise and no conversation begins at 0:42):
http://web2.millercenter.org/rmn/audiovisual/whrecordings/ehrlichman/SR7304142ATC.flac

Original transcript by John Ehrlichman of this conversation is from Miller Center; various edits and additions made here are by the uploader:
http://web2.millercenter.org/rmn/audiovisual/whrecordings/ehrlichman/ehrlichman-SR7304142.pdf

A clip of this audio accompanied by transcript is on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn0--YtlW-g

MR. EERLICHMAN: Come in, sir. Sorry to drag you down here this way, but things seem to be moving and I thought you'd better know what we know. Sit down.

MR. MITCHELL: I'd like to know what you know.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Late last night I gave the President the results of what I had been working on since about the 25th of March, which is an effort to try and give him as much as I could determine about the extrinsic facts of this whole episode, that is to say outside the White House, which Dean really had not brought in...

He felt all he needed to know because he had some judgments to make. He then asked that I talk to you and several other people about something that I discovered in this thing that troubled him very much, and that was that some people thought that their silence served his purpose at this point. Now...obviously you are in a situation of jeopardy, and other people are, too. He does not -- this is very hard for him, and that's the reason I am talking to you -- he just didn't want anybody to labor under the misapprehension that there was any overriding consideration on his end of this of anybody remaining mute.

Obviously, everybody's got to decide for themselves if they've got a Fifth Amendment situation or a "putting on their boots" situation. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the attitude that several had, John Dean for one, that he is better off not, not testifying than testifying and telling the truth for the President's interest.

The President obviously, his interest institutionally, not individually necessarily, but the institution of the Presidency is better served by having this thing aired, disposed of, and put him behind this, so to speak.

It's very hard to put it behind him, but that is a better route than trying to take than one of making it difficult to get at the end.

Now, I learned in the process of trying to reach people that -- access routes -- that Job Magruder has decided to make a clean breast of it and take a guilty plea.

So that pretty well starts to work from the middle in all directions, and apparently he will be seeing the U.S. Attorney to carry this out either over this weekend, or immediately at the first of the week.

He...on the four corners of my investigation, that will pretty well determine the ultimate outcome of things. Absolutely everything's been  made to work. In addition, it's coming unstuck in a number of other areas.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, I'd like to know about it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, the U.S. Attorney is focusing on the aftermath and the obstruction of justice aspect of this, and apparently has induced Hunt to testify through some arrangement or other. That's not very reliable evidence.

MR. MITCHELL: From what I hear, that's probably true.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: That seems to be the [unintelligible] What he would add, I don't know, But apparently it makes it hard for [Paul] O'Brien [lawyer for the president's election committee] and others, and they expect that they will make a very wide-ranging of the case on the aftermath basis or aspect of it.

MR. MITCHELL: What basis?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.

MR. MITCHELL: In what way did they obstruct justice?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: In inducing the defendant to withhold testimony is their theory, in court purple.

MR. MITCHELL: Is that factually true?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't, I can't say that it is, from anything that I've been able to find. I have not been able to find any direct efficient actor who made that assertion. I've got a lot of third-hand hearsay, but I have not in my investigation been able to make that, and so advise the President.

Because he...a lot of allegations have been made with regard to John Dean, for instance, and I have not been able to point out to the President any reliable evidence that John had any corrupt motive or participated in any such obstruction.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, certainly there wasn't any corrupt motive. Poor John is the guy that just got caught in the middle of this thing.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Sure, sure, and that's what I said.

MR. MITCHELL: Like so many others that were first of all trying to keep the lid on it until after the election...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: And in addition to that, to keep the lid on all the other things that were going on over here, that uh...

NR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: That would have even been worse, I think, than the Watergate business.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: The question comes up whether these fellows would have talked to the press or not. If it was during the election, it would have been far worse than if they'd talked to the U.S. Attorney. Now, so...

MR. MITCHELL: Yeah.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: You'd have a lot to talk about, I think. But anyway, Silbert is going full bore on that, and in some ways it's the least of our worries, but in other ways it does involve a lot of other players who were not involved in, in the break-in thing.

MR. MITCHELL: Of course it also involves the White House fund.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Now, Strachan has been a witness.

MR. MITCHELL: What has he testified to?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, of course I don't know. But I know they interrogated him on that question...so that's before them.

Now, as far as what you do, obviously you're the captain of your own boat on this, but the President wanted you to have me tell you right now that he is extraordinarily troubled by the situation in which you find yourself, and therefore everybody finds themselves -- That this in no way affects his feelings for you in any regard.

MR. MITCHELL: Mmmmhmmm.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: In the least degree, personally.

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible]

MR. EHRLICHMAN: So, that's the only reason that I'm delivering the message instead of him, The reason that Bob is not, obviously, I am sort of the one stuck with putting this whole thing together for him. Now, I would suppose that the way things are going in the judicial process, that the Ervin thing will be hung up for a long time, that there will be a whole round of new trials and different trials.

MR. MITCHELL: You think they'll be acquitted?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Now that's not what the Senate ie saying, but that's what the knowledgeable attorneys that I've been talking to, -- like O'Brien, and like [unintelligible]. So, I don't know what the future of all that is.

MR. MITCHELL: What are you getting out of the Justice Department? Anything?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No. Kleindienst is staying very far away from this thing, as far away as he can get. So, I have been relying primarily on sources within the U.S. Attorney's Office for what little information I do get on who's going to be a witness, and that kind of thing but really, I haven't tried to get too much of that.

MR. MITCHELL: What is the schedule of witnesses?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Hunt is set for Monday.

MR. MITCHELL: Has there been any determination as to when John Dean is likely to get up there?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He thinks sometime in the middle of the week, something like that. He still has not had his informal conference, so oh, so oh, -- he has not imparted anything at all, at this point. The attorneys for Dean say to him, and he says to me, that they are almost not interested in him anymore.

MR. MITCHELL: In Dean?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, because they've got this thing made so many different ways. They're running a surplus of evidence-

MR. MITCHELL: Are you talking about the obstruction of justice?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: The whole thing.

MR. MITCHELL: How are they making that?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know. I really don't. Uh, but whether they were playing cute with Dean's attorneys or not, I don't know. But they called and said they were moving ahead with a fellow down, and Silbert, or whoever he was talking to, said, "Well...in due course. We have so many witnesses that we have to handle now, that we don't know what to do with them."

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible] (10:50-10:54)

MR. EHRLICHMAN: And they've had people like [CREEP spokesman] Powell Moore.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, Except Powell's testimony at this point, that the incident when he and Liddy went out to see Kleindienst...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No. Well, I understand that it also had something to do with shredding, destruction of documents. I called Dean and said, "Why do they have Powell Moore," and that's what he told me. So that's the message, and it's almost not worth dragging you all the way down here for, except that it's not the kind of thing that I could say to you very effectively on the telephone.

I am remaining to do anything which will in any way put pluses on the side of the Presidency...that are rapidly running out, on this one.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, what is his proposed action?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He hasn't any right to tell you what to do.

MR. MITCHELL: I'm not talking about telling me. No, no. What is his proposed action?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, he doesn't have just a lot of options.

MR. MITCHELL: No, I know. But we've talked all along.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: About the only thing that we see that can be done is to try and get out the facts with regard to, say, Bob Haldeman, in whatever way remains to be effective. I've got a problem now and I haven't figured out what to do about it. And what I do with all this information. It's mostly hearsay. It's probably not much of it adding to what the U.S. Attorney already knows. But here's the President possessed of a report and it argues that some people are in violation of the law. What in the world does he do with it? What do I do with it.

MR. MITCHELL: There's obviously two things: to take care of his own house in an appropriate way --

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Right, right. That's underway.

MR. MITCHELL: That's the one thing. The other thing is certainly not to impinge upon anybody's rights.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Exactly, exactly. It occurs to me that probably the best thing I could do is simply to advise Kleindienst that I have done this, and that it is, none of it, first party evidence and it's all hearsay. But that it is a report that I put together.

If anybody is interested in it at the Justice Department as hearsay or second class evidence, I'll repeat it to them. But that it's not the kind of stuff that would be admissible in Court, or that would add much to what has already happened.

But I think we have to say to somebody that we have done this, that it's in the media. That it's available. What do you think about it? Kleindienst probably hang up on me.

MR. MITCHELL: Um, well...I go back, John, in looking at the President's interest in what's developed over the period in time. And you, of course, have a separation of powers in this thing. You also have individual rights...so that...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Any rushing out and saying, 'Hey look, this is what we suspect'.

MR. MITCHELL: You also have a scenario which has developed unfortunately around the President with the Dean report, so-called, so forth, and now John of course becomes a participant, uh, as to when this knowledge was available, and what was it, and why now? Because of the pressure's on, and all the rest of it. I think that has to be thought of...rather carefully.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Right. Right.

MR. MITCHELL: Is Chappie Rose coming in? As anything more than a consultant?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: The President hasn't decided yet. That's our recommendation.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, I think that is probably something of consequence because of John's involvement.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: John Rose?

MR. MITCHELL: No.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: John Dean. John Dean is virtually gone out of any active role in the White House.

MR. MITCHELL: No, but I mean that there has to also be public [unintelligible]. (15:54-15:56)

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Frankly, one drawback to Chappie is the fact that he has a son on the White House staff.

MR. MITCHELL: Yeah, but also [unintelligible]

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. What do you think about this business of my calling Kleindienst?

MR. MITCHELL: Uh, I would sort out carefully as to what you would call Kleindienet and tell him about. I think that probably it's a good thing to do in connection with your Chappie Rose move. In other words, if he comes in as an independent, then the sooner you get at the bottom of it...and then may be better that he sit down with Kleindienst. Very carefully. The mere fact that he goes over and sits down with Kleindienst is going to take care of the P.R. aspect of it. What he tells him is not going to be made public anyway.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I think that's right.

MR. MITCHELL: So I think that you might handle that very carefully, how you parcel this out. Well, let me tell you where I stand. There is no way that I'm going to do anything except stay where I am because I'm too far, too far out. Uh, the fact of the matter is that I got euchred into this thing by not paying attention to what these bastards were doing, and with me, as far as it goes, this whole genesis of this thing was over here [White House], not over there [re-election committee].

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No, I didn't know that.

MR. MITCHELL: Gordon Liddy and John Dean...it goes back even further than that...but I've never been able to put the pieces together. Bob Haldeman and I were talking about this Sandwedge operation.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I remember the name.

MR. MITCHELL: And it turned out that was to be an entirely different operation, of course, and it turned out that we just couldn't get enough players. [Jack] Caulfield couldn't do it, we were coming up with Joe Woods [formerly of the FBI and brother to Rose Mary Woods], so we just dropped the whole thing, turned it off. The next order of events of the sequence was when Dean and Magruder and Liddy show up in my office with this presentation about a million dollar intelligence operation which, of course, I just told them to get the hell out of there. And of course Jeb blames John Dean on that, and one of the problems --

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Blames him for what? For turning it down?

MR. MITCHELL: No, for authorizing Liddy to prepare the million dollar [plan]--

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Oh, I see.

MR. MITCHELL: One of the problems is if Jeb goes public, good God, he's got an imagination which is incredible.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He's got twenty different stories.

MR. MITCHELL: I know.

Well, that was the last time I saw Liddy or ever talked to him until about the 15th of June when [CREEP spokesman] Van Shumway dragged him into my office with a letter to the Washington Post about the campaign finance violations.

So, I have had no contact with Liddy. I've never seen Hunt. And as far as Jeb and all the dirty tricks department -- I never looked into it from the [unintelligible]. So, as far as my having made all these public statements and so forth, I'm just going to go ahead with it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Just go ahead, and let them come to you?

MR. MITCHELL: Yes. I'm going to have to. There is no other course.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, I certainly would not attempt to tell you what to do.

MR. MITCHELL: I know, I appreciate that.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: The thing that is lurking in the President's mind and that I could not disabuse him of was, "Do you think John thinks that he ought to hold bad, for me?" I said, "Well, I haven't talked to John, I don't know what's in his mind."

MR. MITCHELL: Hold back from the President?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Hold back, no, no. Hold back from coming forward on account of the President. In other words, if you were to say to yourself, "I shouldn't come forward on this because I will hurt the President", and that kind of thing.  Well, somebody's got to talk to him and say: "Don't hold back on account of the presidency." And that's really the burden of this conversation. I don't have any desire to have you take away anything else except that, as his message. It's a question of his saying do this or do that or the other thing.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, what you're saying is leaving the options to me.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Totally. Totally, completely. It has to be that way. We don't want to ever have you look back on this moment and say, they had me do this and shouldn't have, whether it was right or wrong, or anything of that kind.

MR. MITCHELL. I understand.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He didn't want you to be in the frame of mind, sitting in New York, saying, I wish I could come forward, but I can't because the President doesn't want me to.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, to save my reputation point of view.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

MR. MITCHELL: Furthermore, John, with all the thought that I've given to this I really don't have a guilty conscience. I didn't authorize these bastards to go over there.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, then...that's what you should do. Really, that's all I have for you today, except he wanted me to be sure and deliver it in person, how he felt, and he hopes it all turns out all right, you're in for a lot of rough weather for the next few months.

MR. MITCHELL: I'm sure of that. The whole basis is how do you cut it off? There's no way to cut it off.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: They say that they've got you made.

MR. MITCHELL: Yeah. You mean the U.S. Attorney's Office?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: Did they say how?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No. And this was before anybody knew Magruder was coming forward.

MR. MITCHELL: I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: As I say, I don't have a reliable source, and so, I'm going pretty much on...

MR. MITCHELL: Of course, the possibility of me having a fair trial in the District of Columbia with all this publicity is negative.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No way, no way.

MR. MITCHELL: It's unreal. Of course with all of this...there is certainly no possibility that I would ever turn in and say, "Yes, I was part and parcel of this."

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Sure, okay. Well, can I get you an airplane to take you back?

MR. MITCHELL: No no. I can get a commercial plane, if I can find a seat on one. There's one thing, John, one thing...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: We can work on a seat to New York for American Airlines.

MR. MITCHELL: First class?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: [to an assistant] First class. Yeah. Oh uh, see what you can do.

MR. MITCHELL: I would like to be kept advised, within propriety, as to what the hell is going on down here.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: For now I think I would be the one to do that because I'm kind of clearing house. Hopefully we'll get somebody like Chappie and he would be that person.

Our information is not very damn good, frankly. We've got an awful lot of stuff after the fact. We have people buffering us all the time to do this and do that, and do the other thing. And they give us a lot of stuff that isn't true. So, you have to be awfully cautious about what you buy.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, now when you're talking about having me made, are they talking the Watergate, or The Post, or-

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. No, they're talking about the Watergate. The way the story goes -- well first, let me say I think Liddy has been talking to the U.S. Attorney...and that they get a lot of their information from a long period they had with him. The way the story is supposed to go, Magruder brought you a memorandum that said on it, "We are now ready to go with this operation. We will need such and such an amount of money. Here are the targets that are possible. Please pick the targets that you want."

MR. MITCHELL: Are you serious about this?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yes, sir. And that you, then by some designation, circles or checks, or something, picked the targets and authorized the operation.

MR. MITCHELL: That's about as far from the truth as it could possibly be.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, this is the kind of stuff they're working with.

MR. MITCHELL: Liddy and McCord?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I assume so. Less McCord than Liddy.

MR. MITCHELL: What's the time frame?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: This was prior to May, or some time. I'll tell you when it was. It was prior to the purchase of the equipment, allegedly.

MR. MITCHELL: When would that have been?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No, I don't know. Apparently they know when the equipment was bought in New York City...That's, what they tell me is the quality of the evidence.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, that's Magruder's testimony.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I doubt it, because as far as I know, Magruder has not yet talked to them.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, I never saw Liddy between the 5th of February and the 15th of June.

MR. EHRLICHNAN: Well, you know, all I can tell you is what I've heard, and as I say, I can't vouch for the quality of it. But they are operating very much on hearsay and there's a lot of talking back and forth among the defendants which has been quoted...where, Hunt says to Liddy, "Gordon, this is a crazy operation. We shouldn't go back in there," and Liddy says to Hunt, "Howard, we have to. Mr. Mitchell personally insists upon it."

MR. MITCHELL: Oh, come on.

MR. EHRLICHNAN: Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: That's ridiculous.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I know, but that's the testimony.

MR. MITCHELL: But where would Liddy get that?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know. I do not know. But that's part of the res gestae. So that's the sort of thing that you're up against. And it sort of pervades.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, it's about as far from the facts as you can possibly be.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, it makes serious problems, obviously.

MR. MITCHELL: It certainly does. All you have to do is listen to what McCord's been saying. Of course, McCord has gotten it from Liddy, and, of course, Liddy was using my name, obviously, to impel these people into their operation.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Right. Well, that's the kind of thing that has the president concerned.

MR. MITCHELL: Needless to say, I'm concerned too.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: [to assistant on phone] Right. 1:48. K. Would you write that out for me? Thanks. [tells Mitchell about plane] It's confirmed. An hour and a quarter.

MR. MITCHELL: They're leaving at 3:30?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: American at 3:30?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, she'll write it down on a card for you.

The President said if there were any reason that you want to see him, he'll be happy to see you. But his judgment was that you and I should decide on that.

MR. MITCHELL: I don't want to embarrass him.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: It wouldn't embarrass him as of today. It might later, you know. That's the problem, right.

But uh...I might caution you. You remember the other day I asked you about your representation? O'Brien is probably a target and you may want to arrange other help.

MR. MITCHELL: I've thought about that too, John, but until something develops there is just no...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I just wanted you to know, they're working hard on him, apparently.

MR. MITCHELL: Who knows the story of our post activities? Do you know that?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Paul. O'Brien.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, I talked to him about it. He only knows something way down the line. He doesn't know anything up front.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He knows quite a bit. He laid out an awful lot for me out in San Clemente. In fact, he is my principal source of information on that phase. Dean has added a little bit to it, but not very much.

MR. MITCHELL: Now, what do they say is my involvement in knowing about it?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Not much. Just that. Just acquiescing and calling on Dean for help. And that's about it.

MR. MITCHELL: How did I call on him for help?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Just saying, can you get those fellows over there to help us raise some money, and not go "what?", or anything of that kind. I've not found anybody, as I said before, who could be identified as an actor in the process of inducing anybody to perjury or silence, or anything of that kind insofar as the judicial process is concerned. And so of course when the President asked me about that, I just had to tell him, I don't know. Maybe it was the lawyers. Maybe it was their lawyers. I don't know who was involved in that [unintelligible] thing.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, apparently from what I've learned, Bittman was the moving factor, and expected his fee, in Hunt's activities.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I'll bet you a wooden nickel that he's made a deal.

MR. MITCHELL: That Hunt-

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, who's he been talking too?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, I don't know that. But I know that Hunt's coming forward, there's some evidence to the fact that...something worked out.

MR. MITCHELL: What did Bittman say? He's a knowledgeable guy, but-

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Who's the big guy?

MR. MITCHELL: Yeah.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know. I understand he's in trouble with his firm out of this whole thing.

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible] Maybe you could level with him.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Now Kleindienst has said this to me...that if you in any way get in a crack in this case, that he will disassociate himself entirely from any process. He doesn't want to make any decision. He wouldn't want to in any way to touch the case.

And he's calling me regularly to advocate the appointment of a special prosecutor. That is not what, I at least, think ought to be done, to bring in somebody from the outside in, get some scalps, get a reputation for himself. That's exactly the wrong way to go. All sorts of eccentricities...there's a perfectly good Deputy Attorney General over there to delegate anything like that you're doing.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, unofficially, I think every time you bend the justice system, and certainly every time you get something like this-

MR. EHRLICHMAN: And in court.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, nono. That's not the- The thought that every time something comes along, you have to supercede the prosecutor-

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. MITCHELL: In other words, you're throwing brickbats at the system of justice.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. So...that's not been finalized. In regard to things moving fastest...we'll have to tell...We'll have to come to some arrangement. There's going to be a tendency to say, "Well, we have to go in your department. You'll have a problem." Apprently, Henry Petersen feels the same way.

MR. MITCHELL: He wants out?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: That he ought to remove himself from the process.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, he's got friends in it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, that may be the problem. They're friends and they don't want to be in it. You know, it's just, uh, a net minus.

MR. MITCHELL: Mmmhmm.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: In the whole thing.

MR. MITCHELL: They can play rough if they want to [unintelligible].

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I will be glad to, ya know, answer any questions as they come along, or keep you posted if there is a development. I didn't talk to Magruder but he was invited to come for a similar conversation and informed [unintelligible]...but he last night decided that his attorneys have advised him that they decided [unintelligible] so that kindof moots any conversation that I might have.

MR. MITCHELL: What is he going to say about what he said before, about people over here [White House]?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I dunno. He says he is liable for perjury. Now whether that follows anything he's said in this direction, I really don't know. I don't think anybody here has asked him.

MR. MITCHELL: Uh no, I'm not thinking about that problem. He has basically perjured himself -- [unintelligible] -- but some of the statements that he has made about Bob and I, about Haldeman knowing all about this. And Colson, and --

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I think that was an effort to frighten people. And I have not talked with Bob in detail about that, but Bob says that he has given another version since which will probably make you even more worried than the last story. But their feeling is that he has settled down to basically what is the truth. He says what he says, he's going to tell the truth.

MR. MITCHELL: The story that he tells is that LaRue apparently was with him in one phone conversation that he had with Colson, and Colson pushed him on that.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, well, I have no doubt that there were such calls, and that he will testify to that if he can. That's part of the thing I ran into in the course of this real short course that I had in this thing; that Colson was urging action. He had a lot of trouble with Magruder doing a lot of different things. He had trouble finding out about schedules and about what the Democrats were saying, and all that kind of thing. I think that one of the problems here, is that one fellow goes into intelligence with one thought, and the fellow who was listening to him...thought another when he heard the word, and that there were imperfect communications at this point.

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible]

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yup. Yup. So, uh...and that's Colson's view. When he called Magruder and said, "I need intelligence", he meant a certain thing. Magruder may have listed a different thing.

MR. MITCHELL: Unbelievable.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: He knew. He, Colson, was [unintelligible]. It would tend to color the definition, I suppose. I obviously don't know what this conversation was, but I know that there were a number of occasions when Colson was on Magruder to do certain things, and they didn't all run to intelligence things.

MR. MITCHELL: Riots on the Capitol steps. A few other things.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yup. Well, let me know what I can do.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, what I would like you to do is to keep me posted --

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I'll make sure you do. Except that I haven't anything that's really reliable.

MR. MITCHELL: Yeah. Well, has anybody debriefed these witnesses at the Capitol Hill hearings?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: No. I'm told that's a violation of some section or other...to solicit from a witness, so we've been very scrupulous in not doing so. A lot of what I picked up I have picked up from these run of the mill leaks, these press leaks, and other kind of leaks, about what they're saying. It not very good.

MR. MITCHELL: I know it was done before the election. I can assure you of that.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, another bit of information, speaking of that, this attorney that the Cubans fired...

MR. MITCHELL: Rothblatt?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: ...is a witness before the Grand Jury on Tuesday.

MR. MITCHELL: What's his place in the scenario?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know. I know that he has said -- well, now he's McCord's lawyer, for one thing. He has said that his clients were paid off, to keep quiet, and he's said that to Committee investigators. And so I assume that's why he was called because they're working on that phase.

MR. MITCHELL: Mmmhmm.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: And Kalmbach is going -- [unintelligible] talking to him, I don't know what he said at the time [unintelligible].

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible] all the circumstances favorable [unintelligible].

MR. EHRLICHMAN: So, he's been subpoenaed. Herb has been subpoenaed by the select committee duces tecum, and they want his bank records going back to the 1970 election. [unintelligible].

MR. MITCHELL: Oh, one other problem, John, in connection with that...money that was delivered. Should they ever attempt to establish that that was part or that zillion dollars that I had left over from '68, which was not subject to campaign finance laws.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: That's true, isn't it. I have always believed that.

MR. MITCHELL: I had always heard it was so, John, but now Maurice Stans has got so many items floating around...I'm not sure where to put it all together, he and Kalmbach had a meeting where they tried to balance things out, but then they had Sloan who was...

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Another [unintelligible] extent.

MR. MITCHELL: Apparently so. There is something that would save a lot of grief if that wasn't campaign funds.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know how we can use those facts beyond what Morrie [Stans] and Herb can put together, but Bob's impression is: that was the source of the money. I asked him, saying it was '68 money, what happened.

MR. MITCHELL: They say they had, just bringing the money into New York [unintelligible] million dollars.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: I don't know. I guess it was pretty close to it.

MR. MITCHELL: [unintelligible]

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, as I say, that fund is now before the Grand Jury. And that's a problem. Because Strachan misspoke at the Grand Jury and said that he had returned $250,000, and in point of fact, he remembers only returning three hundred and twenty-some thousand. And so he came in and asked me what he should do, and I said that he ought to call the U.S. Attorney and just tell him you misspoke, and that you wanted a chance to correct the record, which you've now done.

MR. MITCHELL: What does that mean, that some of the money was paid out of here?

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Was paid out to somebody named Baroody in the P.R. business for an ad, as best I can recall it. There are no books of account on it, apparently they have asked to see it. Somewhere in the last days of the campaign, Howard [Stans] asked for money to pay for this ad, and that's where it went. But otherwise, it was never tapped. It wasn't tapped, ever.

MR. MITCHELL: That's not what I understand.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: It was tapped before?

MR. MITCHELL: I think that's what I heard.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, that's the first I heard that it was tapped.

MR. MITCHELL: To pay one of these characters, Hunt or Liddy.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Before it got back over to the Committee?

MR. MITCHELL: Mmmhmm.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Gee, that's news to me. That's something I've never heard before. That Strachan tapped it? Or somebody.

MR. MITCHELL: Apparently John Dean is the one that was working on it, and he went to Strachan, and they had to get Bob Haldeman's clearance on it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, let me tell you what I understand it to be the case. Strachan came to Haldeman and said, "How about this fund of money", and Haldeman had not had occasion to think about it since the time of the ad, and said, "Well, the campaign's over now. Send the money back to the Committee." So Strachan took the money back and gave it to LaRue who was designated to be the recipient of the money. The whole thing was wholesaled back to LaRue.

MR. MITCHELL: Well, you'd better check this with John Dean because he's the one that told me this story, I guess early last week, and I had heard it before; that there was some of that money used to pay Bittman or whoever delivered the money.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Before it got to Fred?

MR. MITCHELL: I don't think there's any question about that. Maybe two or three payments.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Okay. I'll check.

MR. MITCHELL: And Strachan obviously wasn't going to do it on John Dean's request, so he went to Bob on it. He questioned first John Dean on it.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Well, I will talk to John, before I talk to anybody else, see what's up. I have another visitor-

MR. MITCHELL: Alrighty.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: And so if I can make you comfortable somewhere else, I'll be happy to do that. Can I get you an automobile?

MR. MITCHELL: I don't know if you can make me comfortable.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: You know what I mean, hahahaha, I'm running a kind of musical chairs here.

MR. MITCHELL: Mmmhmmm.

MR. EHRLICHMAN: Thanks John very much.