It's a particular pleasure to come to the Twin Cities since I must tell you that I feel partly responsible for the election of Fritz Mondale as vice president. During these past seven eight months. If you wonder how it was that I could accomplish this while I was suspended and on the sidelines and not taking part in the political campaign all I'll reveal all now. I watched I watch the Democratic Convention last July on television from Aspen where I was enjoying my exile. And found someone to my surprise that one of the Oregon delegates in some kind of gesture cast one vote in the nomination for vice president for me. Since the mondale's are neighbors and friends in Washington. I felt I didn't want to be placed in opposition to him. However much I appreciated the gesture. So I immediately sent him a telegram saying that I was releasing my entire delegation. It was symbolic in a way of a change state is the reversal of roles. Do I watch the convention find that I want some they're covering conventions as used to be my habit. But instead my name was being used in various symbolic forms because I had become now. A news reporter anymore. But in some ways a new story I missed the opportunity to cover the campaign to the extent that it was a campaign. Often thought of what I would be doing if I had been fully active is a CVS card responding. I can now share with you some of the lines that I was not able to say on television. One point, I thought the match if we had some little panel program commenting on the way things are going and I'll be there in the studio with Walter Cronkite and he turned to me and he said what do you think are the main issues in the campaign? Can I say well Walter? You don't say well wall to get cut off the are you now? Well water I'll tell you it seemed to me for a while as though the main issue in this campaign was going to be abortion. But now I think it is Shifting and it shifted from abortion towards lust. Which I tell you Walter isn't so bad. I think it's high time that we began dealing with causes rather than effects. And then if it's the Cronkite gave me 20 more seconds, which would have been highly doubtful and said, how do you describe the mood of the American during this campaign? And then I would have said well Walter it just seems to me that the American voting public is polarized between fear of the unknown and fear of the known. But those were lying. So I share with you because something had happened and I was not in my accustomed place. Ides suffered a kind of remarkable reversal of roles I was no longer the investigative reporter. I was the investigated reporter and not working as a reporter at all suspended by my own organization the target. Congressional investigation seeking first to punish me by declaring me some early in contempt of congress when it appeared. Might not work very well. Then it devolved into a seven-month-old investigation as to how a report which has been written for the public ever reach the public. better cost of almost a quarter of a billion dollars and ending with my being called to testify with a demand that I provide the source. Let me go back a little bit. I recall at the last February after the house intelligence committee's report appeared or rather exploded in the Village Voice in New York that things began happening to me. Of all the things that happened there is some that stand out most vividly in my mind because they became symbols of how my position and state is had changed. One of those was a series of phone calls so numerous. And some of them so abusive and a few of them. So threatening, but the police advised us to change our telephone number and get an unlisted number. And I don't know why it is that having an unlisted telephone number for the first time in my life. Seem like such an important change, but it was and I guess it was in a sense because the symbol of being a reporter is excess ability. And when you change to an unlisted number that you are symbolizing that you want to cut yourself off from people and I've always wanted to be available to people. That's what I was rather a painful thing for me to have to do and it underlined what was happening in my life. I'll tell you a painful that was wasn't half as painful as what happened when the going got really rough. And at one point I wanted to call or Dial A Prayer organizations, Washington. So now I was no longer investigative reporter. I was off my beat and I was being interviewed wherever I went and subject of an investigation. But in order to understand what this meant to me, I have to back up a minute and tell you that I never wanted to be an investigative reporter that was not a part of what I had in mind 10 years ago. When I returned from many years is a foreign correspondent intending to settle down in Washington to a fairly quiet existence the assignment which I had undertaken was covering things like health education problems problems of poverty in America environmental problems. I wanted to cover all those things which I thought television was not covering very well then in 1972. I had to drop that because like somebody in my business when it's time for the political conventions, we drop whatever we're doing. We all go to the conventions part of a big team. We spend an awful lot of time and energy and money competing and what is sort of the Olympic games of television news the song it was that when I return to Washington at the end of the convention is at the end of August 72. My bureau chief called me in and said, you know, it's a story. We really haven't paid enough attention to because we were so busy down in Miami. Alexis business of the breaking into the Watergate building in June. I mean here are Woodward and Bernstein in the post carrying story after Story indicating God Nixon campaign money was found in the pockets of these people and funny those things and Howard hunt with a White House consultant and that we haven't really done well, and he asked me to take over for a while at least as my assignment the coverage of Watergate. I recall that I objected I said, you know, it's not my kind of story. It's crime. It's politics and to see me sort of way. And you know, I do these do good stories, and I'm not sure this is really a kind of a thing for me. And for the more I said, I would enormous Vision which is the Hallmark of every great television commentator. Course in predicting that the story would end pretty soon. What I underestimated was the enormous capacity of Richard Nixon for self-destruction. If you would have take as a theoretical case. A scenario in which a president would involve himself in discussions in his in the Oval Office. Covering up a crime and make sure that the evidence of his participation in the obstruction of justice was recorded on tape. And then when the knowledge of the tape reach the outside world will then make sure that the tape was preserved. Except to erase maybe about 18 and 1/2 minutes off it to make sure that everybody was suspicious about what he was up to if anybody had written that as a scenario it would have been regarded as an inconceivable thing for anybody to do and yet. In fact is what Richard Nixon did Hedy not every step of the way taking an action which ensured that he would be driven from office. He might be in office till today. But my point about this is that because all this uncovering and the unraveling of Watergate. this country sat and watched with kind of horrified fascination I part of the government which they had never known existed. The secret intelligence community at work. They began to find out that they had been abuse of power. By those to whom Americans had entrusted power, but they also began to find out something else. That they were a group of people and a series of practices and a bag of tricks that had grown up over the years in secret with somehow or being dragged into our political Arena, but must have come from somewhere. And it looks as though what was really happening. Was that something like the peeling of an onion? It would you take off one layer and then you find underneath it another layer of something earlier and deeper. I mean, let me tell you precisely what I mean. If you take as a top player Watergate the break in the two break-ins in the Democratic headquarters in May and June 1972. You peel that off and you find 1971 the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg psychiatrist by the plumbers who were the plumbers plumbers were little group in an office in the basement of the executive office building that was set up so that President Nixon could have his own little FBI and CIA. What were they supposed to do special little job spying on the senator Kennedy trying to find out maybe they can get something worse on Chappaquiddick that was known following him around surveillance of people. They wanted to maintain surveillance over some wiretapping pics of that sword opening mail. Of intelligence tricks being carried out by people who basically words in the case of Howard hunt and alumnus of the CIA and Gordon Liddy and alumnus of the FBI. And if you didn't peel off 1971 and the plumbers and you come back to 1970 and the next layer of this onion the next deeper layer of this onion in 1970 is the Tom Charles Huston plan for that was a very important episode in American history Tom Charles Huston. Young in his 20s White House aide from Indianapolis who had the job of drawing up a plan in conference with the CIA and the FBI and several other intelligence agencies, which most Americans never knew existed even one of them call the NSA the National Security Agency a billion-dollar agency normally under the Pentagon, but actually a big independent agency that engages in the most sophisticated kind of electronic eavesdropping the DIA the defense intelligence agency in a few smaller agencies. They were all brought together by Miss to Houston. Who said the president wants a plan? Which will take all the resources and all the kind of procedures. You people have developed the foreign Espionage in surveillance, and he wants to do them here. And he wants to do them, even though they're illegal to do in this country and the plan specifically said that we have to be very careful to keep it secret because what we're doing is against the law. I'm in Houston plan was signed by President Nixon. and the Houston plan became a plan in which collegiality was legalized by the station of President Nixon for what he was legalizing was the employment of a series of tricks that will contribute it to him by the intelligence community and intelligence community that America do very little about Well, that was as far with back at that point as the onion could be peeled. Because well because when President Nixon resigned and was very soon thereafter pardoned. That made it impossible to find out a lot more of what happened. Now I can speak now and more freely and more frankly since I'm not a working journalist at the moment. Then I would speak as a CBS correspondent. So I guess I can say what's been always on my mind. but the timing of President Ford's pardon of Nixon scandal the timing was a scandal. I think that a pardon was in the works at some point. It was going to happen and had to happen. I don't have any particular desire to see mr. Nixon in jail. That's important. What I do think is to this country to at least fill in those last chapters of what Watergate was about and not cheat history as he is now able to do It is remarkable that one. Mr. Nixon left. That there was still big question marks that may remain question marks forever because I don't think that mr. Nixon and his two million dollars worth of Memoirs is going to give us the answers for example. We don't even yet know for sure why they went into the Watergate building here is Watergate that is given its name to a whole era of American History are we don't yet know why they went into this high-risk operation to break into Democratic headquarters. What were they hoping to get that made that risk worthwhile? We don't we think we know it's something to do with Nixon's fear of Larry O'Brien the Democratic chairman because O'Brien had worked for the Howard Hughes organization and apparently Nixon was afraid that O'Brien knew something about the Nixon connection with Howard Hughes that worried Nixon a lot and it was apparently but we're not sure and attempt to dig out what it was that O'Brien had that might be sprung against Nixon during the campaign is merely speculation. But Nixon knows why and Nixon doesn't have to say we don't know why Watergate. We don't know about all the money that went to the Bebe rebozo. We don't know about the possible millions of dollars raised in some illegal way that made Nixon say that if we need a million-dollar to Howard hunt don't worry about that that I've got that in cash. That's easy. Where do those minions come from? Are they in? Bahamian Banks, I mean one at work is all that talk of illegal money that was flowing back and forth through the bozos hands or through comebacks and we've never gotten the full story of the whole parts of the Watergate hero that remain still unknown to us and who knows if we'll ever know them. But to the extent that we did know about Watergate it looks as though the Watergate. Was ending with the resignation of the Nixon pardon, but no it wasn't that way at all because what happened was that now that the revelations had started from within this secret intelligence Community it began to look as though the CIA itself. Once the most leak proof of all agencies might be getting also a little bit Lykke. There were people in the CIA and the FBI who was suffering slow Burns and outrage for because of the scandals of what their agencies have been involved in and so when I came back from vacation in the fall of 74 all the second phase started just as before I have been propelled into an investigative job by Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post now. It was Seymour Hersh. New York Times well in the fall of 1974, so I heard you broke a couple of CIA stories and saw her at a one big expose about how the CIA had tried over a. Of years to oppose and finally undermine president Allende in Chile fix story, but it didn't grab America didn't grab America because well, I guess because Americans don't care that much about what happens to Chileans. And this was about all the CIA have been involved in the early 60s on the most presidents Johnson and Nixon. Inspiring in this country and maintaining surveillance over Americans and tapping their phones and doing a whole lot of other things as part of an attempt to oppose anti-vietnam sentiment anti-war sentiment student to set an attempt to create a small police state in this country because of the psychotic fears of both presidents Johnson and Nixon about where anti-war sentiment was going in this country make a big impression in Factory created a furor the factory created such a few other even President Ford heard about it. President Ford have known anything about it. Do you have known about it? Because the CIA had never bothered to tell the president either Nixon or Ford or the CIA found out in an internal investigation of its own back in 1973 and investigation that was launched because they were worried that after Watergate. It was things that were doing that might come to light that would look bad. Not that they had any great worry about the ethics and morals or the legality of what they were doing, but they were afraid it would look bad. And so they launched their own investigation into what they have been doing wrong and in 1973, they stopped all those things by a series of orders and kept the orders and the investigation report secret from President Nixon. That's the first point knew about it was when he picked up a New York Times began reading with the CIA been up to and it called him Bill Colby the director of the CIA then is it what is this? Are we in the times and called me? So well, it's true. We did those things watch massive, but we didn't have we found it out in our own investigation in 1973 company. You're a year-and-a-half ago. President Ford said the what else did you fellows do over there that you found out? Call Lisa. Well, William. Turn all that. We've been opening the mail in the post offices with an opening in the mail between the Soviet Union and the United States for 20 years. 1953 until 1973 but we stopped in 73 because we thought that it might get to be knowing. That wouldn't be so good. I'm forward to what else are you fellows doing it? Well, there was these LSD experiments you say you didn't know a whole lot about what LSD and so some of our scientists thought the way to find out would be to conduct experiments on people. And if you want to do the experiments, right, you can tell people they're technically getting yellow State cuz it might have an effect on them just to know that they're being experimented on so we can ducted experiments on unwitting Americans. And one of them a pentagon employee was driven into a state of psychosis and jumped out of a window and killed himself. But we paid attention to his family. And what's up? What else? Well, it was eavesdropping and with a long with the NSA in this country at random sort of which maybe we shouldn't have done but we stopped at 2. Everything else at 4th and call me so well, yeah. There were these assassination conspiracies that were these what? the well, you see it what times in the past 20 years when they were foreign leaders that we thought or to be gotten out of the way and so we took down and try to figure out ways of eliminating them like well there was lumumba thing in the Congo where we see how they plotted to try to kill lumumba and was well on its way with his plans, but it takes some time to do it in the CIA and some other opponents of him killed them on but before we could get to him and then there was procedio in the Dominican Republic CIA cooperated in Dominican Republic to kill this dictator Supply them with arms, but at the last minute all files show they decided they didn't want to do it. They sent word out not to kill to hear you. Well, they killed him anyway, but we don't consider ourselves responsible for that after we had gotten this on the way. Then there was a Schneider in Chile. He was the Army chief of staff and he was a supporter of I-10 day and we work for the Chilean military group of Colonels there to try to kidnap General Schneider. We didn't want to kill this kidnapping. But the day that you think these kernels botched it they ambushed his car and he was supposed to get out of his car and get himself kidnapped and he didn't want to get out of his car and there was some gunfire and he got killed, but I was not our plan. It was a kind of bad kind of they all they toyed for a while at one point with whether or not to kill Sue condo in Indonesia, but I didn't get very far. They played with assassination plots. M42 that's terrible. I said you and the worst thing would be if America's got to know about it cuz I would make Americans very uneasy. and Kobe agree cancel 8 then got this plan of a typical plan, which is be used before if you want to try to avoid deflect. Outrage and head off a congressional investigation. What you do is you announce a big presidential investigation. You preempt the field So the plan was President Ford was announced that it was going to be a big blue ribbon panel set up to investigate the cia's domestic surveillance plans. That would be relatively harmless because I heard that already told that story anyway, so they would tend then to write a report confirming that story but maybe keep investigations away from some of the most sensitive things like assassination. No, President, Ford, whatever else he may lack does have a certain quality of directness and honesty with some people might even call naivete. And at times when Ford was asked why did he appoint? If you wanted to create the impression of a thoroughgoing investigation of the CIA City appoint a commission headed by Nelson Rockefeller and including Ronald Reagan and people like that couldn't find some people's with Ford's which I wanted to say. I had to appoint people very carefully because I was afraid that with access to the CIA files. It was things that would trip over that would be very dangerous like assassinations. That would be very bad if I came out and Ford told that to enough people so that that leaked out and so the thing that fourth fear the most accomplished The subject of CIA in assassination plots was raised one night. I having checked out. The story went on these Cronkite CBS Evening News. And I said President Ford is worried about assassination plots. It was a CIA has been involved and he's trying very hard to keep them from coming out and that put assassination on the agenda. And so now with two congressional committees conducting their own investigations of intelligence wrongdoing in spite of what for that hope would happen the church committee. The senate committee was Fritz Mondale as one of its members decided that the first order of business was to investigate assassination conspiracies, and I spent several months on it and they issued a fairly full report on it very carefully written. It describes all the parts. I told you about and one more because if it was one target all the CIA within more intensely hated over a longer. Of time the subject of more plots and all the others put together. It was Fidel Castro in Cuba. From 1959 on and for eight or nine years the CIA kept trying to kill Fidel Castro. They really couldn't stand to see him alive and when they weren't sure they could do it themselves this multibillion-dollar agency with all their covert operations operators. They formed a partnership with the mafia. The mafia was angry at Castro too because he had driven them out of the casinos used to control and Havana and so they had their own scores to settle and formed an alliance with the mafia to try to kill Castro. What are the unhealthiest thing that happens to you when you feel safe from anybody's inspection? Is that you do things which after while you look back on using how could I have done them? There are people in the CIA today who do not understand how the American Central Intelligence Agency got itself into a partnership with the American underworld setting up all kinds of possibilities for blackmail of the government and indeed the CIA or times was enlisted to try to protect the Mafia When Mafia people were being investigated by the FBI the CIA and a couple of cases told the FBI to lay off. These are people we are working with the CIA became a protectorate people like Sam giancana and Johnny, roselli and other Fragrant Mafia types were under the cloak of protection of the Central Intelligence Agency. That is what happens when secret power can remain secret to be using secret with nobody to account to you just lose contact with reality. And these parts against Castro may have had another significance. They went on up to and including the day when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22nd 1963. On the very day when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas on that day a CIA agent in Paris was meeting with a Cuban double agent. And in the latest of the series plots against Castro was giving this Cuban a ballpoint pen the end of which was really a poison needle. For the latest one more time. Let's try to kill Castro. And when the Warren Commission investigated the assassination of President Kennedy the CIA. It's part against Castro wouldn't let them know the Warren Commission was not told about it. What's the connection? What is the connection between a president assassinated in Dallas and the CIA trying to assassinate Fidel Castro? We don't know exactly where was his cover up. I'm here was Lee Harvey Oswald involved with pro-castro groups in New Orleans. 5 weeks before the assassination. He went to Mexico City and visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and try to get a visa to go to Cuba and describes himself as a friend of Castro and now they're comes out as the latest piece of paper to come out a memo by J Edgar Hoover saying that he had learned from confidential sources that Oswald let it be known. the Castro that he planned to kill President Kennedy What's the connection? The Warren Commission could never establish his motive could never establish who programmed him wide is unstable mine at the side of the killed President. Kennedy was possibly Castro's revenge for attempts to kill Castro Castro had given an interview to the Associated Press a few weeks before the Kennedy assassination. Nobody noticed it at the time saying and the CIA was trying to kill him and they didn't stop there might be retaliation in America. But none of this played much part in the investigation of the Kennedy assassination because here we deal with an agency you the FBI was doing its bit. Also, they had a lot more contacts with Oswald and they care to talk about and Hoover told a few of them, but not all of them to the Warren Commission. See we're doing here. with secret agencies which by force of habit Consider that the only problem they have is to avoid institutional embarrassment to themselves. They find themselves and consider themselves to be not really part of the constitutional government accountable to the American constitutional government. We had raised in America we had started out with the Glorious OSS that went overseas and blow up bridges in Germany when the war was ended you had these romantic James Bond types not knowing quite what to do, but then there was a cold war so there was at loose to fight the Cold War but then came they turned on the Cold War began to sort of phase out and in the end all these lovely chickens that we hatched to send around the world came home to roost. Are we had here a group of people? Playing that games doing that little tricks. Are we doing nothing about them until Watergate which just coincidentally happened to expose some of them because the Nixon administration had drawn on this secret Community, but America was now in its third year. Are the most amazing series of disclosures ever to wash over this against country to sort of the end of 1975 that Americans were accepting it and we're interested and they wanted to know and they felt that the oh you've got to wash the dirty Linen in public and they're making Heroes of those involved in these investigations and Senator Ervin became a big folk hero for Watergate. Is that a church thought that maybe he could run for president on the strength of this son of Watergate investigation and report it became famous and Rich and thigh Hirsch because they were part of what I want to know about. It was the era of disclosure. Intelligence agencies or very professional very cool. They don't penny. Play the long with this. They kept a low profile it cooperated. They knew when things were going the wrong way. And what is where the Congress tell him almost everything. They want to know what we're sorry about. What we did is go to be better from now on we'll cooperate in the investigation is and try to root this all out for some time that would change. when the opportunity would arise for a kind of a backlash to be mounted, when will they begin to turn it around because The secrecy establishment has to operate in secrecy and at some point they had to be able to put those secrets back under the lid or they could not operate the way they wanted to operate. So we watched and waited as these investigations rolled on and layers of onion with peeled off and worse things were told that went deeper back to the 50s in the forties. All right. Now as I look back on it can be good to see how to change begin three incidents were used and manipulated in order to begin an anti disclosure backlash about a year ago the attempts on the life of President Ford in California, because when that happened in Washington, you began to see that used for a propaganda line, which when the only way you can protect the life of the president from nuts of that sort is to maintain surveillance of people surveillance began to become a good word again, you have to keep an eye on people. Otherwise the president isn't safe. Then there was an explosion shortly thereafter in the locker at LaGuardia Airport in New York. And then the line that came out of that was Well, what do you expect the FBI's been demoralized by investigation? They can't do their job right? Maybe if you left them alone. They might have gotten wind of these terrorists working in New York and thirdly they climactic incident around Christmas of last year the murder of the CIA station Chief in Athens, Richard Wells. We don't know who killed them. I left wing weekly in Athens. Had pinpointed him and said that he was an enemy. And it's resume that that fingering off Welch may have been somewhere involved in his murder. It is also true with the CIA has not wanted people to know that the CIA agency itself a few weeks before I send a telegram to Richard Welch telling him that he should move from the house you lived in because it was too well known as the home of the CIA station Chief in Athens was dangerous and he hasn't moved or not soon enough, but I would rather not focus on lapses and its own security Arrangements they had other August things to do with Welch the body of Wells was brought home in a big Air Force plane. I landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at the ramp with a president usually land when he comes back from trips. And the pain that come in about 15 minutes early and so was kept circling in the air so we can land promptly at 7 a.m. On live television. I've been President Ford waved a lot of regulations to permit Welch a civilian to be buried in a national cemetery and Arlington with full military honors. Go to Chapel service from which the Press was barred. And members of congressional committees investigating the CIA were not invited. As a way of making the point that they were being held responsible in some way for the death of Richard Welch. His coffin was carried on the case on and drawing by the same horses that it carried the coffin of President Kennedy. President Ford, was there a secretary Kissinger was there? Ever the first time in American history a secret agent was turned into a public national hero. Around his grave was to be mounted the big secrecy backlash. Then you began to hear that agents could be killed. Intelligence agencies couldn't do their job because investigations were going too far and leaving us naked. And that word began to be applied as a pressure on Congress and you can feel a true wind. After Christmas of last year beginning to come over Washington on the subject of disclosure. One felt that they drive was starting to end this. Of disclosure. So in January here was the senate committee headed by son at the church and a house investigating committee headed by Otis Pike of New York working on that final reports and house committee was going to be first, but they were running now into a lot of trouble. The CIA was not giving him any more information was making lots of objections to what they wanted to put in their final report was acting tough. I was saying come on knock it off now no more investigation finish up and you can say all the things, you know, because it's National Security. Sewing 23rd of January. The house committee voted 9 to 4. To approve its final report which contain a lot of information embarrassing to the CIA. Although I don't think damaging to National Security at least the large majority of the committee which wrote that report thought so they made a lot of changes to satisfy the CIA and some changes they refuse to make for the approved the report the New York Times and separately I got access to that report and the New York Times and CBS gave a highlight summarize report told what was in it told about? The Cloudy Crystal Ball, but not a backlash was moving very fast. And there's a lot of pressure being put on the House of Representatives. I was being coming clear that the Ford my campaigns as the upholder of security against a leaky House of Representatives Democratic control and they got scared. 29th of January a remarkable thing happened the House of Representatives voted by more than two to one. Do instructors intelligence committee not to release the report report my new which the whole country by now knew about more or less was going to be suppressed in a kind of panicky political action by a house, which had never read the report and that presented me with an interesting problem. I thought the New York Times had a copy turned out New York Times had a copy taking notes on it but didn't get to keep a copy. I had a copy the house intelligence committee was instructed to turn in all copies of the report. All the printed copies will put on the lock and key by the clerk of the house. So it began to appear that I had what might be the only copy of this report in the Free World. If I can put it that way and I had a problem. If I did nothing at all, that was a decision to it meant that I would be taking the final action to suppress the report. I thought about it. It seemed to me it seems to me that's perfectly all right for a congressman in obedience to what they consider to be the prevailing public opinion in their districts to do something. So peculiar is to try to suppress the report that's been written for the public. That's a political function of a political body. But it seemed to me that the constitution put me on a different track. James Madison had said that the function of the press that the uniform people if they can't govern themselves. And oh my reading of the writing of the constitution in the First Amendment convinced me. That whatever government does it is a job with the Press once you have information to make that information available. That's where they at 4 otherwise The people are manipulated by government. And it seems fairly clear to me that information which I had especially since the highlights oven has been given. Anyway, I had to make available. Let me know tell you what. I have not said before. Because up until the end of this Congressional investigation. I've made it a point not to discuss what happened between me and CVS at all because I didn't I didn't think I was any of commerce's business, but now that investigation is over. Let me say that the first thing I did was to appeal to CBS to arrange for publication of the full report. I work for CBS News, which is part of the broadcasting part of CBS, but CBS is a big corporation which happens to own a cup of publishing houses. Holt Rinehart and a smaller paperback house and I say yo Act For CBS, and I together to publish this thing so people can happen and they thought about it. They said no. Edvin no hesitation about reporting the contents of the report earlier, but now that the house had voted. That it didn't want to report out. It seemed to make a difference and CVS declined cooperate and then I advised that if I couldn't do it through CBS. I was going to see the report published anyway. And so I try to get a paperback publisher to publish it but they was scared now its backlash was working and paperback Publishers were saying things like we're afraid if we publish this will be blamed for killing some secret agent somewhere. Who said to me? I can't find a book publisher to publish it. But I have only one offer to publish the full text of this report as a yes. Tell me it was Clay Felker. Play soccer publisher of New York Magazine in the Village Voice. Yeah, so while both of those papers as you stories about me personally, I don't like them. It's your only chance. So, all right. I guess you don't get to do it the most elegant way. You'll get the Encyclopedia Britannica or someone something nice. But if you say that you're going to give it to anybody will publish your text if it's going to be only Felker in his Publications. Okay, and I did that. February 11th, The Village Voice came out with a text practically the text about report and the roof fell in. A lot of pressure on CBS from its Affiliates which found themselves something in trouble with Congress television stations. Don't like couple with Congress. CBS suspended me continue paying me pay my lawyer because to the extent that it is involved the source. They had to the source. I obtain while working for them. They didn't seem to like very much what I had done there after a butt is hard to separate out what I done before what I done after they were all part of the same thing. And house then voted to investigate. The house now was almost in a state of panic because they felt they had to do something to make some kind of demonstration at the seven months. I was Target all this house investigation. They spent a quarter million dollars. They talked to 400 on Witnesses and try to find out who done this terrible thing of giving me this report. They didn't find out. It's finally the end of August. They issued a subpoena for me. I told them. I made it clear that I would not under any circumstances. Tell them the source and appeal to them not to subpoena me, which I thought was in itself a chilling thing to do but they issued a subpoena for me. Anyway, I guess that turned out to be a very useful thing to happen because it brought the whole issue with the focus. belatedly The Press rally to me in newspaper offices that were petitions role that was played by 1 Minneapolis reporter. On the Minneapolis Star that the young reporters name is Randy first. Randy very early thought that there was an issue here that involve the whole person depressed wasn't Raleigh and he approached the newspaper Guild. He started a petition campaign involved and then the Federation of radio Television artist my union involved and The Writers Guild of America and in the final two weeks after the subpoena, they did an amazing job getting thousands of names on petitions famous people. People are newspapers and radio and television all over the country and all the day before. I appeared before the house Ethics Committee on the 14th of September Randy first that Fantastical young organizer got a congressman to make available a room. In the house office building for big press conference and call Bernstein was there instead of the Cranston was there and saw her she was there I have stolen was there and they made publicly petitions with several thousand names made out of speeches and all the sudden. The house Ethics Committee began to realize that it didn't it was no longer as it looked in February the guy that everybody wanted to see punished now all of a sudden it turned the other way. So when I appeared before that committee on the 15, even though 9 different ways and nine different times. They asked for information about my source and nine different times. I told him I couldn't give it to them in nine different times German Flint read the riot act to me statement indicating that I can go to jail for this. By the time that hearing was over we knew we'd one. They took an informal poll in the committee. Either would not have enough votes to recommend a citation for contempt. There's a big lesson I learned from that. it wasn't my organization CBS my profession breast Richard one is It was the people at the wee Elite. Washingtonians used to have such contempt for the ordinary people in America. What's on how awaken I roast and Telegraph that congressman and said that we don't want a guy to go to jail. Because he's trying to protect a source that he has to protect. In order to give us information. I must admit to you that during several of those months. when I've been sort of out there in Exile, but I kind of begun to lose faith. I thought this thing which I had done which I thought I had to do was going to turn out to be a net minus for freedom of the press in this country. But now it was turning out differently. There was a newly quickened and liven sense of what this was all about. Yes, you could make Americans understand. That it's business of reporter sauce was. not just a matter of a reporter's right to report but was more like your right to know that was involved and then if it one case and especially the cases nouturios is this even one case one reporter betrays One Source that the reporter has pledged to protect. There's a lot of sources dry up. And have a lot of sources dry up. And you really have the potential for a lot of water gates in this country. Because what made Watergate collapse and what is the best Assurance against future watergate's? Is the ability of reporters to get information on officially? If we have to exist on information by press release because those are willing to talk quietly to reporters have been scared. By the knowledge that they can't be protected and we're in another kind of a bowl game. Then we are in the Ballgame of official news and government officials who can relax and not worry that their conspiracies will be found out. I think I thought that the house had read America wrong in a certain. Was that yes Americans want National Security and yes Americans want personal safety, but no, they're not ready. To pay a price for that. I'm going back to an Era. Where are you? Give the secrets to all the government officials who keep secrets and throw the key away and say don't tell us what you don't want us to know not this soon after Watergate not this soon after the very term National Security was debased by President Nixon this part of his cover up and when the secret stamp was used to stab not things which were military secrets on National Secrets, but just personal guilty secrets of people with secrets to keep we are not yet ready in this country to give implicit trust in every government official and say keep the press out of it. Tell him what you want to tell him and the rest is a big secret because it's National Security. We're not ready yet for that. That was my feeling that there was more complicated. Series of reactions in America that people in the house seemed to think it was not as simple as back to security and to hell with disclosure not yet. That's the way I read it and I think the results are kind of supportive at in the house when the chips were down this funny house Ethics Committee found. It could not threaten to send me to jail and expect to get the support of the house which meant they could not expect to get the support of the American people. Victory of kind we met each other eyeball to eyeball they blinked. That's nice. I was scared. I really didn't want to go to jail. That's what I was a likely possibility. I just didn't know anyway. To avoiding and I had to stick with it because there wasn't any way once you start it. So now I go on I didn't want to really go back to CVS. The truth of the matter is I thought the most of those months in suspension was really a preliminary to being fired. I think I'm an embarrassment to CVS. But then after September 15th and hearing things changed all of a sudden the television doesn't like losers, but they do like winners and everyone and so they called me into a meeting with a indicated they will discuss my reinstatement. and I thought that the if I didn't they didn't want me when I was far behind I didn't really want them when I had one. So I quit. Urban the hardest part about quitting with other a certain number of people I can tell you how many wants to go back to television and I thought about that because you realize that you have your own kind of constituency over the years you owe them something and but it is I don't think I could be effective. I think that the That the situation for me and CBS with besides baby. So full of tension that I couldn't operate very easily. I have all the ways to communicate and do some writing know I can say is if you liked me on television you'll love the book. I come out of this difficult time feeling. It's all pretty good. And for the best the first amendment is Alive and Well in this country the first thanks to the fact that I think has been strengthened in recent months by evidence to support. I think we'll be there. To continue to play its role. You should criticize it. You should not discredit it. Nobody should ever let you drive a wedge. between free Americans and their Free Press I think some of those things have been highlighted in the past several months and I like to think that I helped a little and one reporter or maybe X reporter. It's not a bad president present for 1 bicentennial year. Thanks.