Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). All right. Let us move on to your comment on page 14 where you refer to your conversation with Mr. Mardian, "It was not until almost a year or so later that I learned the reason for Mardian's trip to see the President. Mr. Mardian later told me in a social conversation that he had gone to see the President to get instructions regarding the disposition of wiretap logs that related to newsmen and White House staffers who were suspected of leaking." Now call you expand on the conversation which you had with Robert Mardian at that time? John Dean. To the best of my recollection, the conversation was a very very minor part of a very rambling conversation when I recalled the fact that we had gone to San Clemente together and had gone to visit a friend of his in San Clemente and spent some time together. I was out there for one purpose that was to turn off a burglary of the Brookings Institute. He told me that he couldn t tell me what he was out there for. I recall he went down to San Clemente at the same time I did and I waited for him to have his meeting. He did not tell me after the meeting what had occurred. Then it was in recounting the fact that our visit with this friend of his out in California, when I finally asked him, I said, Well, what in the world were you doing out in California? He said, well there were some wiretaps and I had gotten the logs from Sullivan and I had to get instructions on what to do with them and I was told to give them to Ehrlichman. It was a very fleeting conversation, but it stuck in my memory.
Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). All right. You then say, have in your statement, I had occasion to raise a question about these logs with Ehrlichman during the fall of 1972. What was that occasion? John Dean. I tried to recall that as I was preparing my statement and something did occur in which I asked Ehrlichman directly about the logs. And I cannot recall specifically what it was. Again it wasn't something that was of the moment of the Time Magazine inquiry but it was a reference to something about newsmen. There had been on the rumor mill at the White House for some time this fact that the White House had instructed a surveillance of White House staff members and newsmen in dealing with leaks. And I asked Ehrlichman about it. I said, do you have the logs? And he said no. And I let it drop at that. Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). Even though at that moment in time- John Dean. I knew he had the logs. Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). You were under the impression from a talk with Mr. Mardian that you did have the logs John Dean. Yes, sir. Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). I beg your pardon, that he had the logs. John Dean. Yes, sir.
Watergate Hearings: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities June 26, 1973 - Testimony of John Dean.
Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). Then comes February 22 or 23 of this year, and to paraphrase your testimony I gather you were placed in position of trying to find out about the leaks with the FBI relative to a potential Time Magazine story? John Dean. That is right. Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). So that you interviewed yourself, Mr. Sullivan? John Dean. That is correct. Senator Lowell Weicker (R Connecticut). Would you describe to the committee the nature of that interview? John Dean. After I learned of the inquiry, I called Mr. Mark Sullivan or Mr. Mark Felt, and asked him first of all, if in fact it were true. Because I had never had a confirmation from anyone. I thought I ought to get a direct confirmation. He told me "Do you really want to know?" and I said "Yes. I think I should know. And he told me that yes, it had occurred. And said that Bill Sullivan has all the facts acts on this. He was involved in it and knows all those facts. I then asked Felt if he knew how it had leaked and he said he didn't have any idea. I then called Sullivan and told him that I asked him if he would come to my office. And he did come to my office and I said that I had this inquiry from the press office regarding this. And I had some information that in fact it had happened and I wondered what the facts were. And Mr. Sullivan then recounted the fact that he had been involved in this and told me that he had at one point gotten the most trusted people in the Washington field office to undertake the function. That subsequently he had when Director Hoover was trying to get copies of the logs that he had either before that time or contemporaneously with this time, he had told the Washington field office people to destroy all of the other logs. So it ended up there was one set of logs and related memorandum that were in the custody of Sullivan. And there was some removal of these per someone s instructions and I don't have all these details because Sullivan didn't give them to me, and give them to Mardian. And Mardian had possession of them apparently at the time he went to the west coast to get instructions as to what he was to do with them.