All Hands On Deck - NPR and the Nixon White House
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This is Sound School, and I'm Rob Rosenthal. In just a few days, President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn into office. As the ceremony approaches, I've been thinking about a radio broadcast from just over 50 years ago. I heard it for the first time recently, and initially I thought, whew,

This is going to be a slog. It's unbearable. See if you can guess what it is. The President. You really can't sit and worry about it all the time. The worst may happen, but it may not. So you just try to button it up as well as you can and hope for the best. And remember, basically, the damn business is unfortunately trying to cut our losses. Dean. Certainly that is right, and certainly it has had no effect on you. That's the good thing. Alderman. Noah's been kept away from the White House, and of course completely from the President.

The only tie to the White House is a Colson effort they keep trying to pull in. Dean, and of course the two White House people of lower level indicted, one consultant and one member of the domestic staff. That is not very much of a tie. Haldeman, that's right. It's possible, if you know your history, you figured out that this recording is related to Watergate, the political scandal that shook the United States.

In 1972, members of President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee and they planted bugs, listening devices. Later, the White House attempted to cover up its involvement with the break-in, and the whole affair led to a massive political convulsion in the United States, including Nixon's impeachment and resignation.

Now, the most obvious clue that this broadcast pertains to Watergate is perhaps the names of the people speaking, names that have echoed down through the decades. Haldeman, Dean, and Mitchell. At this point, someone asks the president if he wanted Mitchell's call. He said, yeah. Hello. Well, are you still alive? I was just sitting here with John Dean, and he tells me you were going to be sued or something. Good, good. Yeah, good. Sure.

Well, I tell you, just don't let this keep you or your colleagues from concentrating on the big game. This thing is just one of those side issues, and a month later, everybody looks back and wonders what all the shooting was about. Okay, John. Good night. Get a good night's sleep. And don't bug anybody without asking me. Okay? Yeah. Thank you.

So maybe you guessed this is Watergate-related, but what exactly is being read and who's reading? That may not be so obvious. The narrators are NPR reporters, and they're reading transcripts of secret recordings. President Nixon installed hidden mics and reel-to-reel tape recorders in several rooms at the White House, including the Oval Office. Phones were tapped and recorded, too. The system captured a few thousand hours of conversations between Nixon and his staff.

About 200 hours pertain to Watergate. The existence of the recordings was revealed during a Senate Watergate committee hearing. They issued a subpoena for the tapes, but the White House refused to hand over the recordings. Instead, in late April of 1974, the White House released transcripts of some tapes. Bob Malesky worked at NPR at the time, and in an email, he told me he was a lowly production assistant.

Bob later became NPR's senior producer for Weekend Edition Sunday, but when he was a gopher, as he put it, he was sent to the government printing office to pick up NPR's copies of the transcripts the day they were released. He said they were heavy. Well, no doubt, there were 1,200 pages of transcripts. That is what we're trying to get accomplished. Just a few days later, the transcripts were read on the air, word for word. President, that's right. They've got problems and we've got problems.

It was a massive undertaking for a young radio network that had only started a few years before. It involved NPR staff plus reporters at several local stations. Bob described it as an all-hands-on-deck approach. They canceled debts. They borrowed money.

What the hell is that? Dean, it is still going on, Mr. President. The broadcast went on for hours and hours. Ernie Sanchez, who was NPR's general counsel at the time, told me in an email that the readings lasted more than 25 hours over two days. Here's how the broadcast began. Good morning. From the nation's capital for national public radio, this is Mike Waters. We are capping a unique week in Watergate, indeed a unique week in the nation's history, with a unique weekend in radio.

From now until 2 a.m. Sunday morning and beginning again at 8 a.m. tomorrow, for as long as it takes, reporters from our NPR Washington staff and from six of our affiliated stations across the country will be reading the entire set of 48 Watergate-related transcripts made public by the White House on Tuesday in response to a subpoena issued April 11th by the House Judiciary Committee.

The big question at the time was this. How involved was Nixon with the Watergate break-in and the cover-up? Or as one senator famously put it, what did the president know and when did he know it? It was thought the secret recordings might hold the answer. Problem was, the White House not only didn't provide the tapes, they didn't provide complete transcripts. They have been edited by the White House to an unknown extent. According to the White House, most profanity has been strickened.

some adverse personality characterizations have been deleted and material unrelated to presidential activity has been removed. In addition, the White House claims that portions of the taped conversations were inaudible. Indeed, some of the discussions are almost impossible to follow due to deletions for one of the above reasons.

It should further be noted that while these transcripts include some material already in the possession of the Judiciary Committee... I should mention that Mike Waters, who's reading this intro to the broadcast, he was a host of NPR's All Things Considered back at the start of the network, from 1971 to 1974. Susan Stamberg of NPR once said his voice is so rich and deep, it was like he had a cathedral in his head. Also, the committee subpoenaed tapes, not transcripts.

And while the White House offered to permit Chairman Peter Rodino and ranking minority member Edward Hutchinson to audit the tapes themselves, the committee decided not to accept this offer. After Mike set the stage for the broadcast, he passed the baton on to Bob Zelnick, who introduced each segment of the transcripts. The first of the transcripts, made public by the White House on Tuesday, involves a September 15, 1972 discussion among the President, Haldeman, and Dean.

Dean told the Irvin committee that he emerged from the meeting convinced that the president was aware of the cover-up operation. Haldeman testified that Dean was wrong. But the two differed little in their recounting of the actual conversation. Bob was an accomplished reporter who worked at NPR as well as the Christian Science Monitor and ABC News. He also wrote several books about politics. Bob's introductions to the readings of the transcripts are dense and long.

This first one runs three and a half minutes. And this is what I meant when I said slog. I have difficulty imagining listeners could follow all the details, even though Watergate was front and center in the country. The president thanks Dean for plugging leaks during the Watergate inquiry.

There was some discussion of pressure tactics to be employed in fighting a proposed set of hearings by the House Committee on Banking and Currency, and the president speaks rather bluntly of plans to use the leverage of his office against political foes during his second White House term. Overall, though, the transcript of this meeting provides insight into the mood and the mentality of the Nixon White House more than it resolves questions about the president's knowledge of the Watergate cover-up.

Next in the broadcast, Mike Waters introduced the people who would be reading the transcript. Bill Dowell reads H.R. Haldeman's lines, Joe Guathmey reads John Dean's words, and the reading starts with Paul Anthony taking the role of President Nixon. Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today, didn't you? You got water get on the way, didn't you? Dean, we tried. Haldeman, how did it all end up?

Dean, I think we can say well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expect. Haldeman, whitewash? Dean, no, not yet. The story right now... The president. It's a big story. Haldeman, five indicted plus the White House former guy and all that...

Dean, plus two White House fellows. Haldeman, that's good. That takes the edge off whitewash, really. That was the thing that Mitchell kept saying, that the people in the country, Liddy and Hunt, were big men. Maybe that's good. How did McGregor handle himself? Dean, I think very well. He had a good statement which said that the grand jury had met and that it was now time to realize that some apologies may be due.

Haldeman, fat chance. Dean, get the dam. Haldeman, we can't do that. Just remember all the trouble we're taking. We'll have a chance to get back one day. How are you doing on your other investigations? Haldeman, what's happened on the bug? The president. What bug? Dean, the second bug there was a bug found in the telephone of one of the men at the DNC. You don't think it was left over from the other time? Dean, absolutely not. The

The Bureau has checked and rechecked the whole place after that night. The man had specifically checked and rechecked the telephone, and it was not there. What the hell do you think was involved? Dean, I think DNC was planted. You think they did it? Dean, uh-huh. The President, expletive deleted. Do they really want to believe that we planted that? Haldeman, did they get anything on the fingerprints? Dean, no, nothing at all. Either on the telephone or on the bug.

The FBI has unleashed a full investigation over at the DNC, starting with O'Brien right now. Haldeman. Laughter. Using the same crew. Deem. The same crew. The Washington field office.

What kind of questions are they asking him? Dean. Anything they can think of, because O'Brien is charging them with... How are you doing? Are you following this? It's not easy. The quick bouncing back and forth between Dean and Haldeman and the president, plus more names like Liddy and Hunt and McGregor. And we're only two minutes into the reading of the first transcript, which runs 22 minutes. And don't forget, this broadcast basically goes on like this for two days. Dean.

As I listened to these recordings, I was thinking, how is it possible NPR thought this was a good idea? It's stultifying.

I listened to two full hours of this, and you know how your leg can fall asleep if you sit a certain way? Well, that's what happened to my ears. The president. Goldwater put it in context when he said, Expletive deleted. Everybody bugs everybody else. You know that. Dean, that was priceless. The president. It happens to be totally true. We were bugged in 68 on the plane, and in 62 even running for governor. Expletive deleted. Thing you ever saw.

One thing about these recordings that I found perplexing is the reading style. I realize this is 1974, and news presenters at the time employed a voice-of-God approach, but I wondered why the performance was so flat. I figured it's because they're reporters, not actors. Well, during the broadcast, Mike Waters explained. The way sentences are spoken sometimes affects their meaning.

Since we have no way of knowing how the words in this transcript were spoken or in any of the transcripts, our readers are deliberately adopting a dispassionate style without dramatic interpretation. Bill, Joe, and Paul, the readers, they didn't read the whole time. Others took over, which gave them a break, and the listeners, too.

NPR partnered with six member stations, WGBH, WOI, WUHY, WBFO, KBIA, and KCUR. Staff at those stations also took turns reading. The 30th conversation in the transcripts is being read in the studios of public radio station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri. The president is read by Jan Lance, Ehrlichman by Edie McClurg, Haldeman by Patty Spencer.

Ehrlichman, did you get those? President, I'm going to ask him which one he wants to sign. It seems to me that I don't want to pressure him, or should I just have him sign "effective today" or not announce it? What is your advice? We've got plenty of time. Ehrlichman, well, as I made it loud and clear that he ought to sign both of them.

Then you could use whichever one he wanted or none, depending on how circumstances unfold. President, unintelligible. Ehrlichman, unless he won't, you know, you know what to do at that point. Haldeman, you go to Peterson and ask him not to use... Now, with all due respect to these reporters, I'm not sure a change in voices really helped matters. Listening is still a slog.

But my perspective on the broadcast began to shift when I asked myself this question. If this is not great radio, why do it? Why dedicate this amount of airtime and resources for a lengthy broadcast that was not at all radiophonic? One possible reason, NPR's willingness to go out on a limb. Experiment. Over the years, old-timers at NPR have told me that there was a we'll-figure-it-out-as-we-go spirit back in the day. So it would seem this broadcast was part of that.

Of course, there's another more practical reason, newsworthiness and public service. I mentioned earlier how Watergate was front and center in the country at the time. That may be an understatement. News of the break-in triggered deep investigative reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post. They uncovered a tangled web of political spying and sabotage and illegal finances that regularly made headlines across the U.S.,

I checked the online archive at Time Magazine, an iconic weekly publication at the time, and I counted Nixon and Watergate on the cover 11 times during the Watergate years. By the way, did you meet with the president after you listened to that tape and make a report to him? No, I did not. Did you make any written report to him? Pardon me? Did you make any written report to the president? Only by turning the notes over to him. I did not expand on the notes. Now...

This committee had a subpoena, which was a continuing subpoena to you to turn over... The Senate lodged an investigation into Watergate in 1973, a year before the White House released transcripts of those secret tapes. The Senate hearings were broadcast daily on television. The subpoena specifically called for you to turn over tapes that were in your custody or possession, and you had that tape in your custody or possession, and did not turn it over. I did not consider it to be in my custody. It was...

Not that my personal experience should make the point about how prevalent Watergate was in the life of America in the early 1970s, but my very apolitical mother was glued to the TV.

Every afternoon when I came home from school, she encouraged me to watch. And so I did, while eating my afternoon snack, of course. And I had zero idea what was happening. But my point is, Watergate was like oxygen. You couldn't breathe without taking it in.

NPR broadcast those Senate hearings I watched in 1973. Gavel-to-gavel coverage, as they say. So when the transcripts of the tapes were released, Bob Maleski told me reading them on the air was a continuation of that kind of public service.

As another former NPR reporter put it, there were news stories about the tapes, but few could hear or read them. So we read them to the nation. The President. What did they ask? Any questions? Dean. No. I saw Rothbatt laughing at the start of the symposium. He is quite a character. He has been getting into the sex life of some of the members of the DNC. The President. Why? What's the justification? Dean.

Well, he's working on the entrapment theory that they were hiding something. Buried in the jumble of voices and unexplained references and the sedate delivery are little moments that jump out. Like this one, where John Dean, the White House counsel to the president, predicts the future. Dean, 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, nothing is going to come crashing down to our surprise. The president? That what? Dean. Nothing is going to come crashing down to our surprise. Dean got it completely wrong. Watergate was not forgotten, and everything came crashing down. Nixon was impeached on May 9, 1974, just a few days after the transcripts were released. And he was impeached partly because of his refusal to release the actual tapes.

Then, exactly three months later, Nixon resigned. Here's another moment in the transcripts that pops out, where Nixon thanks his staff for their work covering up the wrongdoing. This is a can of worms, as you know. A lot of the stuff that went on, and the people who work this way are awfully embarrassed. But the way you've handled all this seems to me has been very skillful, putting your fingers in the leaks that have sprung here and sprung there.

One exchange in particular stood out to me. In fact, I backed it up and listened three times. Nixon's words sound eerily like the present. Dean.

Along that line, one of the things I've tried to do, I have begun to keep notes on a lot of people who are emerging as less than our friends because this will be over someday and we shouldn't forget the way some of them have treated us. The President, I want the most comprehensive notes on all those who tried to do us in. They didn't have to do it. If we had had a very close election and they were playing the other side, I would understand this.

No, they were doing this quite deliberately, and they're asking for it, and they're going to get it. We've not used the power in this first four years, as you know. We've never used it. We've not used the Bureau, and we've not used the Justice Department. Things are going to change now, and they're either going to do it right or go. Dean, what an exciting prospect. Thanks.

I have faith in NPR, faith they will doggedly pursue reporting on the new administration with vigor, as they should with any administration. And my hope is, from time to time, NPR will throw their predictable reporting voice to the wind and reach back into the network's DNA for inspiration, to the spirit of NPR's first reporters and this groundbreaking broadcast of

though maybe we don't need a full weekend of tedious transcript reading. But my point is, my ears are eager for all hands-on-deck approaches to storytelling that seek truth, report it, and hold the powerful accountable. It has to be done. No, sir. No, sir. No, sir.

Probably goes without saying, but I'll say it. PRX and Transom give me a long leash, and the opinions expressed on Sound School are mine. They don't necessarily reflect the opinions of those two organizations. I first heard about NPR's broadcast of these transcripts last year from Sean Corcoran. Sean's the executive news director at KUNC in Greeley, Colorado. Thanks, Sean, for telling me about these.

I immediately started hunting for recordings thanks to former NPR reporter Howard Berkus along with Will Chase and Laura Sotabara of NPR's Research, Archive, and Data Strategy team. They helped me along the way. The recording featuring the first hour of the broadcast was provided by the Special Collections and University Archives of the University of Maryland Libraries.

The brief excerpt featuring reporters from KCUR came from an archive of community radio station KRAB in Seattle. Thanks also to Bob Malesky, Ernie Sanchez, Flan Williams, and Susan Stanberg for providing a bit of historical context. This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. Happy New Year to my colleagues Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, Jennifer Jarrett, and my good friends at WCAI.

Even though it remains a question, currently WCAI is still located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. This is Rob Rosenthal. Thanks for listening.