Popularity: 3
Vote:   | After Dean was fired, I was in charge of running the day-to-day operations of his office, while the new counsels, Len Garment and later Fred Buzhardt, dealt exclusively with the defense of the president. I resigned in January of 1974 and returned to Morgan, Lewis in its Washington office, where I built a litigation section for the firm. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | After the savings and loan bailout, the thrift agencies decided that an accounting firm should pay for their lack of oversight. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | At that point we were trying to find out as much as we could about Mr. Hunt. I did not even know who Howard Hunt was, but we discovered that he had a safe in the White House basement. We went through the safe to see what was in there. There were a lot of things, including a gun. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | At the time that President Reagan took office, a new Ethics in Government Act had just passed. His personnel people hired me to advise him on how to abide by the law. I established myself as a conflicts clearance counsel in the transition team. I was not planning on going back into government. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | But look, you did not have to be well versed in politics to know that some stupid things were going on. It is the counsel's job to stop them, and instead the coverup was created. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Dean had just come from seeing his lawyer. That was the first time that I found out that he had consulted a lawyer. He wanted to tell me what he thought was going on, but he was writing it down as if my house was bugged. He acted like everything was bugged. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Dean should never have even entertained the deep-sixing idea, but instead he listened to Ehrlichman and considered it. Perhaps he immediately planned to talk to me about it and then figured he would be able to go back to Ehrlichman and say, 'We can't do this because now Fielding knows.' |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I guess the simple answer is that I'll retire when it is no longer exciting, no longer challenging, and no longer any fun. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | I have considered a lot of might-have-beens in that whole situation. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I learned a lot from living through and surviving Watergate. It certainly made me a better lawyer and a more effective counsel to the president. I was not afraid to tell people no. I was not concerned about any potential political fallout when I had to stop any problems that I saw coming. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I learned afterward in Dean's testimony that the committee had asked him to give me up to be its general counsel. But Dean declined, saying that he needed me to run his office. The position went to G. Gordon Liddy, who is currently famous as a right-wing talk show host, and who had a notoriously cavalier attitude toward the law. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I told Dean of the news accounts that the break-in had occurred when he called me from the Philippines. I did not know what it portended, but he said he was coming right back and seemed very concerned. In hindsight, I guess he was! |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | I viewed my role as making sure that the U.S. arguments were fully considered in our deliberations. I think you can tell by the decision that my British counterpart came to see our point of view. It was a unanimous decision except for one minor issue. It was an exciting role for an attorney, because you also got to play judge - and in The Hague! |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I will point out that the whole White House was different under President Reagan. Information flowed freely in the Reagan White House. On the other hand, it is easy to overlook how good most of Nixon's staff was. The majority of Nixon's staff people were solid and high-minded, and have made significant contributions to the public since then. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I'm still friendly with Dean. He still calls me on the phone from time to time. John Dean was fired and later ended up spending some time in prison for his role in Watergate. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | In hindsight, I was probably perfect because John Dean was a 'Washington' lawyer, and I had no Washington experience. I was a litigator, but I was not a threat to him in political circles. Dean is one year older than I am. I was 31 when I started in the White House, and he was 32. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | It became evident to me that there was a very serious political element at work. I know that the term impeachment was bandied about. I do not believe, however, that the word was used with the ferocity it was more recently or that it was in the Nixon years. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | It is hard for people outside the White House to understand the constant daily problems and issues that come up that require the president's attention, but he can not let himself get too personally involved. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Morgan, Lewis is a very large firm now, but it was not quite as big then. It was exciting for an associate in those days, because you got good and varied assignments and terrific training. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | One regret I have is that I did not learn more about what was happening very early, so that I could have tried to stop people from engaging in illegal activities. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Reagan was incensed and outraged when the CIA station chief in Lebanon was murdered, and his heart was broken when the bombing at the Marine barracks in Beirut killed 260 Marines. He understood, however, that these things happen. I never had a sense that he would completely abrogate his constitutional responsibilities because of the hostages. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Soon after I returned to private practice, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called me one day. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The last eight years have created a lot of deep-seated hostility. People take political decisions very personally, and today there is a constant, ongoing attack, with one side or the other being maligned. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The Nixon years were trying. They honed my judgment for everything I did later on. The experience also illustrated for me the importance of training young lawyers properly. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | This drama between Dean and Ehrlichman took place while I was trying to give the contents to the FBI. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | Two close allies had an acrimonious dispute. The U.S. alleged that the U.K. had violated an air rights treaty. It was a very complicated case. We ultimately found that the U.K. had violated the treaty. There were three arbitrators a neutral representative, a U.K. representative, and a U.S. representative. |