RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE: 1974 Through the Fire ( Part 14 ) The Calls in question 1, April 1973 (Special Tape Series 3)

The Richard Nixon Experience

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In our third special tapes series episode we look at various meetings and calls between the President and his staff. Some of these tapes have been spun to make the President look as bad as possible by liberal historians, Special Prosecutors, and liberal media personalities. However, when you listen to these tapes in their entirety I would argue they paint an entirely different picture for anyone listening with an open mind.
So we are sharing these conversations as we did the two earlier meetings in their entirety, or as close to that as we could put together.
They include a meeting with Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, phone calls with Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
We listen as John Ehrlichman reaches out to L. Patrick Gray to warn him of John Dean's duplicity. Ehrlichman who has been often vilified for years, also makes a second call to Gray to urge him to just tell the truth on the secret files Gray had destroyed based on the advice given to him by John Dean, the White House Counsel. ( A case we will look at in-depth in a later episode) This single act of kindness toward L. Patrick Gray most likely saved Gray from being indicted. Gray followed the advice Ehrlichman gave him as we will see later.
However, it is three calls with Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen that are of the most interest in these calls. Henry Petersen was investigated for his role in the early investigation of the Watergate Scandal because he had kept the President up to date on what the status was of the investigation. Everything that could be done by Prosecutors was done to paint this situation as sinister, as Nixon guiding the investigation away from the targets for a suspicious public. But listen to these three calls yourself and make up your own mind as to what President Nixon was doing in them.
He is clear, he gives direct orders as to what he wants to happen, and he instructs the most important of all the witnesses in the case, G. Gordon Liddy, to talk. It is in these calls you walk away realizing that for 5 decades you may not have been told anything close to the truth.
You cannot listen to them and come away believing anything other than Richard Nixon was as determined as anyone else in America to know what the truth was in the scandal of Watergate.