Richard Nixon Charles Colson Talk Watergate, Howard Hughes, Ted Kennedy Janaury 8 1973

Audio for this session between the president and his close aide, Charles Colson, is very poor, and calls out for repair or refinement at some future time, as there are many important details in this meeting. There has always been the question of whether the Howard Hughes campaign contributions to Nixon played any part in the Watergate break-in; here, Nixon complains at what they got out of the burglary: "We didn't get a Goddamn thing from any of it that I can see." Colson: "Well, apparently we did, of course, at Watergate mainly Hughes." Colson then adds: "And we knew." Other important points include compromising material on Ted Kennedy, how they suspect the Watergate inquiry was headed by Sam Ervin rather than Kennedy to avoid being hit with this material, how to deal with Hunt, Liddy, Mitchell, and Nixon's on-going obsession, that his plane was bugged in the 1968 campaign.
Audio is taken from the following files:
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Segment 1: 10:00-16:28
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Segment 2: 47:27-58:33
Segment 3: 1:02:22-1:08:04
Majority of transcript is by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, with some supplemental material from John Dean's The Nixon Defense. Explanations regarding senators Ted Kennedy and Mike Mansfield are taken from The Nixon Defense.
Transcript used in video is on pastebin:
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Original transcript can be found here:
nixon.archives....
On Ted Kennedy and the Watergate inquiry, I include this helpful excerpt from footnote #42 of Part III of Dean's The Nixon Defense:
For what it is worth, I have always been convinced that Kennedy stayed behind the scenes during Watergate because he feared what the Nixon White House might know, which could reopen this matter. It must also be noted that, given what Tony Ulasewicz, Jack Caulfield and John Ehrlichman did know about Chappaquiddick, it is surprising that Nixon did not make this bit of Senate and Kennedy hypocrisy a part of his public defense.
The reference to the bugging of Nixon's plane in the 1968 campaign dovetails with Nixon's attempts to sabotage the Paris peace talks of that year, a subject discussed at great length here:
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[@thomasclinton5875]

Always thought colson favored a yard gnome.