RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1974 Through the Fire (Part 15) The Calls in Question 2, April - May 1973 (Special Tape Series 4)

The Richard Nixon Experience

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This is our fourth episode looking back on the calls and meetings of April and May of 1973. It is the heart of the Prosecution case against our 37th President. When you listen to these calls , in there entirety, not just snippets, or fragments but all of them. You cannot help but come away realizing just how weak the case against the President and his upper staff really was.
It was a case totally dependent on the testimony and words of one man, John Dean, the White House Counsel. All trails, all stories, and all actions, seem to lead right back to him.
In these meetings, and calls, we listen in as John Ehrlichman briefs the President on the status of the case and it appears he is finally piecing together the situation John Dean has created for them all. That instead of protecting the President and being honest with him , Dean has been blocking for John Mitchell and it appears getting all of them deeper into a hole. A hole only John Dean found an escape route out of as the month of May 1973 comes to an end.
We also listen in as Attorney General Richard Kleindienst informs the President about L. Patrick Gray destroying files based on the advice of John Dean. It is the results of advice we heard in our last episode where John Ehrlichman, so often vilified by the media, liberal historians, and the special prosecutors, actually made it a point to advise his collogue to tell the truth and not get dragged into the mess engulfing the White House at the time. That advise probably saved Gray an indictment.
Then we listen as President Nixon talks with his new Chief of Staff and his Assistant Chief of Staff in calls that have also been questioned over wiretaps and the investigation of Watergate,
Then after we listen to all of this material we will return to 1974 in our next episode as the Special Prosecutor's prepare to indict the Watergate Cover up Defendants and move Grand Jury information over to one of their leaders, Special Prosecutor's second in command Henry Ruth's old across the fence neighbor John Doar, who was in charge of the House Judiciary Committee staff.