Word: colson
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...February, Colson contends, he had learned of John Mitchell's approval of payments to the original Watergate defendants. Colson promptly warned the President that these payoffs were taking place. Nixon's alleged reply: "What do you mean? Mitchell says he is innocent." Colson claims that he then told Chief of Staff Haldeman that Mitchell must step forward and take the blame for the payoffs. According to Colson, Haldeman answered: "If Mitchell goes, he's going to take you with him." Colson said he was not worried about that. He asserts that he also warned Ehrlichman and Dean...
...Colson made similar statements in an interview with the New York Times a year ago-but he interpreted the alleged conversations with Nixon as evidence that the President had been unaware of the coverup. Nevertheless the Colson account conflicts with Nixon's claim that he first learned about the cash payoffs and cover-up from Dean on March 21. As Colson tells it, Nixon was warned two months earlier-and took no action...
When Nixon finally accepted the resignations of Ehrlichman and Haldeman in April 1973, Colson now says, the President told him: "God bless you-you were right all along." Colson may, however, put his statements about the President in a less damaging light under crossexamination...
...Colson is also telling investigators that he and the President discussed clemency for Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt shortly after Hunt's wife Dorothy died in an airplane crash in December 1972. Whether Colson contends that Nixon approved such clemency could not be learned. Nixon has denied giving any such approval but is quoted in his tape transcripts as admitting to "somebody" that "commutation should be considered on the basis of his [Hunt's] wife's death." There is no practical difference between commutation of sentence and Executive clemency...
After receiving the sensational Colson plea, the sharp-tongued Judge Gesell turned to the tense situation created by Ehrlichman's efforts to gain access to his personal White House files for his defense in the Ellsberg burglary case. Gesell had threatened to dismiss the charges against Ehrlichman if any ev idence held by the White House was denied him. On Monday, St. Clair had agreed that Ehrlichman, his attorney William Frates and a stenographer could see the files...