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bjbj Naftali: ***, we were talking about Gordon Liddy, and you also had occasion to
interview Bud Krogh. Gill: Yeah, I did. Krogh, as you know, was sort of second in command
of the Plumbers unit, and he was my recollection is in Allenwood, Pennsylvania prison, and
we made arrangement with the bureau of prisons again, I think it s required, John s intervention,
to have Bud, or Egil Krogh was his name brought to us, and I wanted to get his cooperation.
So I asked them if they could have his wife there, and they did arrange that, and we met
at a facility, I think in Baltimore or somewhere, and he was brought down, and of all things,
he was in shackles. They had leg irons and wrist manacles, and I thought, This is not
the way to get his cooperation. So we asked them to please un- they didn t want to. They
wanted me to interview him in irons, so to speak. But anyway, they did, and Krogh was
an interesting fellow, because I think I described him as a boy scout. He really was a true believer
that anything he was asked to do by the President was almost by definition proper and in the
best interest to the country. But once this all blew up, he took on this sort of guilt
complex, and blamed himself for not stopping it, not seeing the direction that the Plumbers
were going, the break-ins they were conducting couldn t possibly be legal, and so on, and
that he should have recognized that, and put an end to it. I think that s an unfair guilt
load, but of course, we were interested in whether or not he received instructions from
the President, so that the link was there. And he never got direction from President
Nixon, Go break in something. Go do wire taps. He just didn t get that kind of instruction.
I think it was obvious from what he told us that in some of his and he only had a few
conversations with the President that the President knew at least wiretapping was going
on. I don t know that he knew about the break-ins or when he knew, but Krogh, when he finished
his sentence, I know that he applied for readmission to the California bar, and several of us on
the staff asked John Doar if it was okay for us to write kind of letters of recommendation,
because I do think he s sort of a clean-cut character, and if anybody in the world would
never go astray again, would be way on the other side of the line, it would be him. But
it was an interesting experience. He did get a little bit of time with his wife, so maybe
that gave us some goodwill. Naftali: How difficult was it for you to determine Presidential involvement
in the Plumbers? Gill: Well, some of it was inferential. Some of it you could tell from
the tapes once you heard them was that because the President commented to Dean and to others
on the tapes about activities that the Plumbers had been doing, that he knew about it. Some
instances of course, it ran through John Mitchell, that is, the Plumbers activities and others,
collateral figures, like Dr. Kissinger whose signature or initials are on the authorizations
or I say that. There s a set of authorizations from Hoover for these wiretaps, and they recite
that Dr. Kissinger called and asked me to do this, and then he puts his sort of had
a funny little scribble that was his mark. And obviously Mitchell and Kissinger were
at the very highest level of the Nixon administration, so I don t think Dr. Kissinger was interested
in the political side of it at all. I mean, that is the wiretaps degenerated into that.
He was interested in what he viewed as national security leaks, and that was the original
cover for the wiretaps, but they certainly expanded into something quite different. But
it s clear from the tapes and the testimony of others that the President knew about that,
and he was receiving reports through Haldeman and the others about what the wiretaps were
generating. So but to say that you could find a direct order from the President, Go break
in somewhere, there never was that. You couldn t find that. Naftali: You mentioned that ***
Cates has this uncanny ability to predict what the tapes would say. Was that because
you and he were developing a theory of Presidential responsibility? Gill: No, the query was whether
or not there was Presidential responsibility. But *** was able to say, from both his skills
and his experience, that, Look, if the parties here on tape number one are discussing this
or doing that, and over here, this event occurs, there has to be a connecting set of events,
and you could I don t know whether it s inductive or deductive reasoning, you could say necessarily
this had to have happened in-between. And it did; it turned up on the other tapes that
we got later. So that s the process. But it certainly was not with a preconception, but
that was our charge, was what was the President s involvement? So we had to make the query,
is Kennedy to be found or inferred? Naftali: How did you come to the conclusion that the
Segretti story was a side-show and irrelevant? Gill: Well, we actually interviewed Segretti,
and he was almost a college prankster. He did things like ordering hundreds of dollars
worth of pizzas delivered to the Republican headquarter I mean, to the Democratic headquarters
and charging them so they spend money and be confused. It was really silly stuff at
the end of the day. We never found anything of consequence, frankly, in his activities.
I don t want to say he was a prankster. It was a little more than that, but it just didn
t have the gravity, and certainly not the Presidential level involvement that other
things did. Naftali: Did you interview Charles Colson? Gill: We did. *** Cates and I interviewed
Colson twice I think. Maybe have been three times, but I have to tell you and I probably,
in the public eye, this is a minority view I guess we concluded that what Mr. Colson
was doing was a kind of a scam. He was a very high-ranking official of course. He was publically
known to be high in administration, and he had made an announcement that he had decided
to tell all, to unburden his soul, so-to-speak, and we concluded what he told us in the interviews
were not matter of consequence. And we concluded that it was deliberate. That by saying, m
going to tell all, and I had the ear of the President, it all doesn t amount to much.
It infers that there wasn t much there. And so we actually recommended at the end of these
to the committee that he not be called as a witness, because we didn t think his testimony
was going to be truthful, and we thought it was deliberately misleading in the sense that
I described. But the political pressures were terrific. The committee wanted to not only
get a full picture, but certainly to be seen to be getting a full picture, and if you don
t call the highest ranking official in the administration who has said, m going to tell
all, and you don t even hear from him, it doesn t look as if you re getting the full
picture, or even interested in it. It looked slanted. So he was called as a witness, and
I remember Congressman Huntgate got a break after Mr. Colson had testified for the morning,
or some period of time, behind the committee chamber there, there was a break room there
where you could get coffee and things, and he turned to me, and he said, Well, you and
Cates told us about this. I understand though that Mr. Colson says he s found the Lord.
He said, After all that testimony in there, under oath, that he s given, he better hope
the Lord doesn t find him. So I don t think Mr. Colson s testimony to the committee ended
up accomplishing what he hoped that it would, and I think it was an effort to exonerate
the President through this appearance that I ve told all, and all is not of an impeachable
quality. But he did testify, and I don t think the committee believed him. Naftali: What
was it that gave you a sense that he was trying to scam? Gill: s a long time. More than 30
years ago. Partly it s you observed it. And the pieces didn t fit together. They didn
t fit with some of the information that was on tapes, they didn t fit with some of the
memos and things that were in possession of the committee. It didn the story wouldn t
hold together under careful cross-examination, which is what a trial lawyer does, and so
you had to ask yourself, What is he not telling, and why? And so that was the conclusion we
reached from it. And I suspect I guess he s still alive I suspect that he would adamantly
disagree with that. Naftali: It was always interesting, wasn t it, that he found the
money for the break-in? Gill: Yeah. And the money for - I don't know if it was him alone,
but the money for the lawyers for those people. And of course, this is the sort of thing ***
Cates and I went to interview the lawyer for Naftali: Bittman? Did you interview Bittman?
Gill: Yes, we did. Naftali: The lawyer for Hunt? Gill: Right. And he had plead he had
agreed to plead Hunt guilty to all the charges, and I think he got the maximum sentence, and
*** asked him, he said, You know, and he was paid three hundred thousand dollars and
he said, Mr. Bittman, let me see if I get this right. Your paid three hundred thousand
dollars to plead your client guilty on all charges, and get sentenced to the maximum.
He says, What did you do for three hundred thousand dollars? He said, I could have done
that for three hundred dollars. And so it was pretty clearly a funnel for the money,
as it turned out after everything else has become known. Naftali: But Mr. Bittman didn
t say it was a front. Gill: No, he did not. He did not. Naftali: Tell us about what role,
if any, you played in deciding how this information would be made available to the committee?
Gill: Well, I didn t play any role on that. John Doar s code, if you will, was we re not
going to make any statement of something as being a fact unless we can document from sworn
testimony or documents that it is a fact. If it is an inference from facts, it s got
to be clearly identified as such. And so he wanted s the one who and I say he; he may
have consulted with Bob Fisk and others, you know, I mean Owen Fiss Robert Fisk who is
dead now, but about the structure to call these Statements of Information, and if you
look at them, there is just that. It s a statement of what we believed to be a fact, and then
underneath it is the source, or sources, and either testimony of somebody document of this,
recording of that so I didn t have any role in that. We were told to structure and write
our reports in that format, and it was a way to test whether what we thought were the facts.
Alright, where can you prove it? Naftali: How much time did it take you to prepare your
volumes, because your work is covered in at least one volume that I recall. Gill: I think
it s two, but I don t know. I ve got that set of those great books. I can t tell you
that. I mean, it s not that I won t tell you that, I just it was an ongoing process, because
we were told to do that, and facts came in, you had to go back and plug them in so that
the story made sense, the Statements of Information were a story as well chronologically and connectively
put together all the facts about a given thing, and for example, the wiretaps. You start with
the question of how were the wiretaps authorized? And then what did they who did they wiretap,
what did they get when they wiretapped them, how did they collate that, because only small
bits of the wiretap materials went upstream to Haldeman and to the President. They culled
out a lot of it that was not deemed relevant to why they were wiretapping. I mean, that
s one of the ways that you could tell why, was the selection process. It was a if there
was four pages of a conversation, and they only reported a paragraph s worth, then the
rest of it wasn t what they were interested in, and so you could pick out the pattern
of why they were doing it. So all that was told in a story, and with the supporting materials,
and other aspects of it, which told but it had to be able to be read through and make
sense, and so that was always an on-going thing. You were writing it and filling in
the supporting materials for over a period of weeks and months really until the process
ended. Naftali: When did you start feeling comfortable that you were getting did you
get a sense that the puzzle was coming together, or the picture was getting clearer for you?
Gill: I know I went home and the only time I went back to Montgomery during this was
at Easter, and I think Easter was in April that year, early April as opposed to March,
and I went to see Judge Johnson who wanted to see how it was going, and he had been,
after all, the pathway as to why I was there, and talked to him about it, and it was clear
that we had gotten the first group of tapes, and those of course we had to listen to, and
I forget, there was six or seven of us that were authorized to actually hear them, and
we had a close room that was soundproof that you couldn t have somebody who was across
the street with a mic pick up, and you had to listen to them through a headset, so it
wasn t broadcast in the room in general. And there was a lot of elaborate rigmarole. But
those certainly confirmed much of what the written materials had suggested, and it certainly
gave a tone that is so clear in there, and reading the tapes is pretty shocking in some
ways, but hearing them is more so. And but I know by Easter I reported to Judge Johnson
that I thought the President was in trouble. And I had no idea what the Congress that wasn
t my level. We got to know and we did this there s an incident when we get to it about
Hamilton Fish who was one of the members but I think certainly by mid-April we were pretty
clear where it was going. Now, there were things being thrown overboard that we never
had any charges associated with Segretti. In reflection, the Cambodian bombing business
shouldn t have been in there. It probably had political overtones. It just didn t seem
to us. At the end of the day, it was included, but it was not adopted as one of the arguments.
That was one of Bob Sack s categories, so we like to kid him that some of his didn t
get the same vote. But I think that s accurate. Because we started presenting the materials
by the end of May, June is my recollection. Naftali: Beginning May 9th, actually. Gill:
Okay. Naftali: The tapes that you were listening to had been brought over by the White House
Special Prosecution Force, they d been given to you by them? Gill: That s right. Naftali:
So you started listening to them in early April? Gill: That s right. Naftali: Before
the White House issued its transcripts? Gill: s the Dirty Blue Book as it s called. Naftali:
So you had this experience not you necessarily personally, but at least the staff having
listened to these tapes, and then having the White House issue its own version of the transcripts
of the same tapes you d been listening to. Gill: That s right. And it s funny, the Supreme
Court decision and I can t date it; I m sorry, I should be able to Naftali: July 24th. Gill:
But we Bob Sack and I were dispatched to the Supreme Court as the representatives of the
Congress to hear the Supreme Court deliver that opinion, and it s got to be one of the
most peculiar days in history. I mean, very solemn occasion in the court, and we didn
t have anything to say, but he and I had both been admitted to practice before the court,
so we were entitled to sit inside the rails, so-to-speak, as representatives of Congress.
And we they had a little gold eagle that we wore on lapels that gave us access. It was
sort of a pass key to ask government officials things. And when we came out after hearing
it, and listening to the rationale of the court, there were all these demonstrators
out in front of the Supreme Court building, both pro and against the President. Some of
them had on those masks of the President. A lot of them had signs and they were marching
around about, Impeach the President, and Pro-Nixon, chanting. And we didn t want the crowd to
know who we were. They wouldn t have recognized either of us, of course in any way, unless
they realized we had on so we kind of hid those, and the committee may have started
the vote or the committee statements from the representatives that night, because there
was a threat of a kamikaze plane coming this is of course long before 2011 was going to
crash into the capitol, and it was a rumor; I don t know where it came from, but there
was a lot of alarm about it, and there were questions, should they hold the session? Because
they were held in the evenings. And then I think a number of very profound things were
said by a number of the Congressmen. They didn t all speak that same night. I mean,
it went on over more than one evening. But that all occurred in a single session, and
it s just an astonishing piece of history to have been there. Naftali: Well, you said
there was a threat that was reported? Gill: There was, that someone and they called it
a kamikaze, a plane was going to crash into the Capitol, and I don t know anything about
the source of the threat. Obviously there was enough credibility about it, there was
a lot of buzz and running around, questions about whether we ought to adjourn the session,
that sort of thing. It didn t turn out to amount to anything. Naftali: Tell us about
the subpoenas. You were going to tell us a story about the issue of whether you should
I guess whether you should issue subpoenas. Gill: That s right. And a number of members
of the committee and of course you have to understand the partisan politics were ongoing.
There were some members of the Republican minority who we felt that it had been put
on there for the purpose of being true partisans. It didn t matter what the facts. They were
the President s men on the committee, there were a couple of them. Didn t want subpoenas
issued. The subpoena process was cumbersome. If a person disobeyed a Congressional subpoena,
the enforcement was cumbersome. It wasn t as if there were court proceedings readily
available and a judge could *** them in and cite them for contempt. You had to go
through a process of contempt of Congress. So it was an awkward process. I know it came
up in connection with getting the wiretap materials, that is the actual transcripts.
Justice Department, FBI did not want to turn them over. They professed to have concerns
that they were an invasion of privacy of the people who were wiretapped, and we said, Well,
it s a little late to be thinking about that. It wasn t an invasion when you did it, as
opposed to us getting it. And we said, Well, we can subpoena them. They said, Well, that
will take you weeks to sort that out. And so finally John Doar asked me to go with him,
because I was the one that at least knew what we were asking for, and the details, so we
went down and met with an Assistant I don t know what his title was in the Justice department,
but I think he s now a Federal Judge, Silverman, and he was a friend of Doar s, they had been
colleagues and John said to him, said, You know, this is you ve got to consider what
this is. We re not the criminal courts. This s a solemn constitutional proceeding, and
we need this. They didn t want to do it, and finally I remember John saying, Well, you
know, if you read the Constitution, the articles of impeachment can be brought against any
Federal official, any person holding public office. And he says, Representative Drayman,
who was one of the leading Democratic firebrands on the committee, he said, s got impeachment
resolutions made out in blank, and you re libel to be the next one if you won t cooperate.
And so they ruminated and decided to give them to us on the condition that we obscure
the names. So I was given that task, and I have to say that my code writing was not very
skillful. I gave them letter designations and that sort of thing, and I think the press
figured it out pretty quick who was who. But we did get them, and we were able to draw
conclusions as I said about why were they doing this, and the materials they reported
upstream to Haldeman gave us a clue. And what was omitted, and there was a lot of stuff
on there of people s private conduct and things that nobody was very interested in, except
sometimes it was used for political leverage, obviously, in the political matters, memoranda,
you can see evidence of that. But anyway, that we didn t subpoena them, they turned
them over under this arrangement, but it was done under sort of coercion. Naftali: So you
concluded, therefore, that though they may have been begun for national security reasons,
ultimately the wiretaps were used for political reasons? Gill: We did. It was fairly evident
that that s what it became. Naftali: Tell us about the camaraderie on the staff. You
re working so hard, you re under such pressure, and you re all supposed to be tight-lipped.
How did you blow off steam? Gill: That s interesting. The tight-lipped is fascinating because I
think it s the only major investigation in Congressional history from which there were
no leaks. Doar had told us at the outset that he did not want any, that we had a duty. Our
client was the Congress. Lawyers don t discuss client s business, and we didn t. Nobody although
we got calls several of us got calls. I got one from somebody on Jack Anderson s staff.
We immediately referred it to our security officer, and didn t respond to them. But all
of the lawyers were young, or youngish. Bert Jenner and John Doar were senior, obviously,
and Bernie Nussbaum was maybe three years older than Bob and Evan, and Evan s actually
a year or two younger than I am. And then many of the staff people, like Hilary, were
younger still. But everybody was it was an amazing group. They were clever people, they
were bright people, they were dedicated people. But they also had Bob particularly had a wonderful
sense of humor and kept everybody kind of together, because it did get long. If you
re there until four in the morning, day after day, and you re getting three, four, five
hours of sleep and coming back to it, weekends included, it got wearing, but I think it s
a tribute to the people John chose and how he reminded us that we had an important duty
and a purpose of why we were there. So it s been a I told him I had occasion to have
dinner with him he actually came to Montgomery on some business a few months ago and I said,
You know, among other things that you did, - and I think he s a great man, he did great
things I said, You forged a network of friends that exists to this day where we all regard
each other as special, lifetime friends. And that s a tribute to him and his leadership.
But we had funny things. We had a quasi Easter day Easter weekend, because I went home for
two days that weekend, but observance and but it is interesting about camaraderie at
the very end, when the President announced his resignation, and we realized that that
part at least was over, and although we were going to stay to put it all into some meaningful
form - and some of us had thought we were going to stay for the Senate trial I wouldn
t have been, I wasn t senior enough to lead any kind of counsel, but we would have assisted
we went around to a number of little places there up behind the Capitol, beer joints and
things, and I remember there was a group of people that I would have described as hippies,
long hair and beads and things, and they were whopping it up. We got him! We got him! All
of us were kind of saddened about that, and thought, That s not the right reaction. However
you view it, it s a tragedy, and this outcome. It may have been necessary, and it may have
been appropriate in the Constitutional system, but it s still a tragedy, and it s not the,
We got him, business. That s wrong. And we didn t stay very long. They didn t know who
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