1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-05-24; Part 5 of 5

oh yeah the first day that i recorded conversation was a lot younger i need with his twenties when he returned home he probably more tightly constructed media righthand corner to find a typewriter you can see down into the water and in chronological order at the time and then the contents of the conversations are in my ear i use the as you that it was the exact frequency that we were monitoring and after about two days mr mccourt came back and said change that anybody read these things but another frequency well exactly

let's continue so you know it was very hard to establish names maybe the first barrier to the subsequent to that you see the problem was i never worked one of the units before and after his record struck me about operated i could tune it so that the minute the coliseum going are coming in i would then be in on the beginning that i would receive a little indication on the scope and i'd be into the conversations i don't know who they asked for who was calling out eventually we only that's correct him to know mr mccourt have been incidents and they were still in every case in iraq well acid

is ten minutes after five in the afternoon rather than receive much more aggressive questioner cell on other questions about a topic or so members of the committee necessarily want to further questioning two letters so i assume you're agreeable returning pleasure to answer questions for the first witness we've had in a long time and i was my idol seventy nine to seventy two you call it there's actually some of those were dressed in business is you know who are going to know

who have you been talking to previously inside the dnc we don't use the morning stream the quality of the translation no qualms was i would recognize what i had in my assumption that i had to make was that there were two other units beside my an operations team that was there and it was turned off because it was very obvious lawyers know anyway i would be cagey but i'm not positive about this question like when one included somebody and without being positive that

there's a nice the voices of unease things johnson said her consultations was inside the center i didn't know any of the individuals were found in the stomach or you want to cross the street i had no knowledge the voice you heard the blind know our man and businesses was not comport with your best judgment that is mr hans stuart karen that was subsequently asked have you subsequently learned that the fight was not inside the democratic national committee but rather was in the water and india are johnson's world to know i was in the watergate hotel directly behind the watery senate watergate hotel but not in the democratic national committee he was at the rear of the democratic national committee so as far as you

can tell you in quiet about polling never use to anyone inside the democratic national committee that's curator the only indication i have any communication was when they got us and whisper and then what i would describe as mr mccourt voice saying are you gentlemen metropolitan police you know the officers who arrested i didn't at that time i don't know if you ever known any of them before now so i have to i have to as during the course of the trial we communicated mr sharma i had observed each other aspirations and really you know i remember observing him and i think he remembers observing they using the same phone call and why we made you using the sign from going well you got to have make reports every two or three hours on this record wanted activity reports whether or not any any groups were moving there were groups were there and who

was there and sometimes i was the only one there the dod capital demonstrations and really before the march to the capital there were several days of preparation for the march and there was gatherings around the washington monument several campsites that out and i think we crossed paths on several occasions because both of us were dressed in the jackson sort of remember each other very funny soprano you know we were if you recognize him on the balcony of the night you know he was a gentleman you see when i saw the video it was sergeant weaker and the southeast did a kmart stood there and observe mr shaffner on the show he was a gentleman that was proceeding on the balcony in a rather dangerous situations that he was more was looking around the side of the building and he had a flash about this i can say for a fact at

that time it was lame and we didn't realize until we were at the trial that we have been a demonstration that we have talking together spawn our questions into wider chairman stop now with your insurance already given that your return if and when we use them nice balconies five days of hearings are over three additional days begin

in june despite the light noisily are there a couple of obvious langfitt talk about drive and try to digest specifically what was accomplished today and more importantly one of these five days those that was news traveling oral insignificant if you watched it all up to now of course you can draw your own conclusions about what's all around as khartoum resident experts of the data at their perspectives there allen barra longtime boston journalist and author of the book government by investigation and the new green for sure the thurston university law school emotion and simon were hour after five days out i've been turning over in my yard my overcrowded mind received so many impressions and i'm not entirely sure what i think i'm pretty sure i think that the us has been useful worthwhile i think that it's the it's been the indispensable

means giving to the american people are a genuine basis for judging whether the responsibility lies awful watergate with all of that term implies of moral decay and skullduggery and meanness i think that the congressional investigation with all its faults and this would've been singularly free from them so far is a great engine for the discovery of truth and for the present tension over to the public which will come to its own conclusions which had the facts we think inclusion well i agree with all that alice said are being much more short range i think the less two dailies and tripoli this morning represents a failure of the time to impeach world record in a baby's five percent turns out

of what they were times you know that i think the evidence showed that the perhaps a little bit more about this about miscarriages relationships with the cia in fact insisted that the others did show that most of things you talked about were sustained particularly when record said that he felt that he was on the pressure of about performance and you know you had everything together i think i think it was not unreasonable for the conclusion of a policewoman and could reasonably nails so the public record high apart from the factories would have more detail on some things i think the facts aren't so no one knows more about things that are so you know it's there yet but that have been taken out of it as mccord has some analysts who has laid out a structure and substance of a plot that was obvious was that not that the senators realize his

importance unless the reason the candidate won at all show more strongly than it has some real witnesses and future career i think it's fair to say senator evan said that for the most part there's been a splendid spirit of bipartisanship or any of that it began to come apart at the scene just a little bit good and in that country to lose the afternoon about about lie detectors percent of the baker within disagreement with senator evan about it that you should have known that senator evan has been not a title of the light detectors for a long long time and for my thought i think quite quite rightly speaking of the senators out of any of their careers been damaged or enhanced politically defined as a result the first five days oh i don't think anyone has been affected that much i think this is strictly formal worm's eye view from a former tennis anyone

i think the bakers got a real chance to prove himself we use as the lie detector issue in a political way with you shu signs of going on about just look for launch it seems to me that at least one person even only a former coast and that several i hoped for a moment will james those folks and i think his status has been enhanced i have been impressed with the yacht kind of central casting quality a row senators of the area they looked as though they'd been picked for our individual characteristics and there are others that was a nice range of diversity in the workforce and several of them it seems to me that have been playing the role of the country almost bumpkin lawyer

have been talking in a very plain country or the bo as naive and innocent and it has real oil wealth eyes over the country lawyers i think that senator tolman as have the us it's taken the prize in that particular character to sing gentlemen thank you very much or a group of activists when we come back in june and that cost london peter carey i talked with chairman levin at the end of today's hearings and found that despite the committee is running a bit behind schedule the senator was happy with the results so far he was pleased that no partisan split as it appeared this morning particularly i noticed you're questioning a little sharper little more persistent is that because of the nature of the testimony years because you feel that some partisanship has been to creep into the hearing mark let them know a surprising lack of partisanship in the made up like they are about the democratic nomination of the members of the

show was from animal of determination and the council both of them i think the council of them made it on this version of a job and then they have a vacancy assessments our legal staff and all the young girls who have investigators learned about on them including the magnificent job they work long hours and find circumstances and i'm pleased with it committed the fall are you still planning to follow the same game plan of i can use a word and starting out with morales the smaller fish and working up to the bigger more important people whoa whoa oh oh i think they have the girls and so the most bizarre incident involving was the actual value and they can navigate but we felt like we had

thought that that without incident and more than write out because of you a long long time crimea will be the first phase of this and then as we intend to go into a questionable connections to campaign on a chilling tale and then now and so we're able to make investigations committee intends to go into the allegations then the show that some portions of attempted amr moussa a campaign is sabotaging your campaigns of versailles candidates for the nomination as the democratic nomination as a democrat nominees in the nineteen seventy two election right

away you broke new ground and got into testimony that there was a time possibly to cover up an attempt to keep the trial from their citizenship is that one of the startling revelations you mentioned all well in this firefight faces as well as a call that there'd been a break in watergate and then now we are information that we're going through the allegations at their weapons maybe it was the us are who keep going to the belly and then bacon number of what their motivations were can look for a narrow testimony such as a whole film of court testimony about over a professional well thank you have a great deal more testimony of information notes that with a cover up of all those well they're cured they can you and speculate on how rich i live without

it evolve always that i've spent most of my part of the world who live in practice because of my division the crew of that show semi of salute discipline by years of legal to conduct ones to speculate about the mission is speculating public television hearings like these can only invite people to speculate because that invites speculation from stock analysts in international money dealers than the foreign governments dealing with the united states in a multitude of ways sen levin in his interviewer with peter j indicated how sensitive ears to the effect of those borders may be having yet i wonder whether the five days in so much detail pouring out of the television sets of america and not begun to produce another effect it was one that senator baker

predicted when i talked to him last week before the hearings began he thought the public emotions on watergate had then reached a high point and that there would be a calming effect as the real facts began systematically to emerge well each one of you will have your own ideas on that something to consider in the right before the hearings resume in june the fed will see you again and second week of hearings the twenty five thousand of you who so far have written letters approving wrigley's commenting on our coverage most of them approving what you say as an influence on what we do for the remaining days of these hearings as they stretch on for the summer and that's why we like to solicit comments from those of you who might still want to share your views with us and that's the kind of coverage this is the kind of coverage you think public television ought to be doing you can send cards to impact bach's three hundred washington dc to go for a four

robert macneil from washington and you've been watching gavel to gavel videotape coverage of hearings by the senate select committee on presidential campaign activities as coverage is made possible by grants for special events coverage from the corporation for public broadcasting and the ford foundation and has been a production of unpacked and a vision of a greater washington educational telecommunications association you're only then remove those