The Fred Thompson Watergate Myth

"Well, we're stuck with him," replied H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff who would resign on April 30.

Later that month, in a conversation with Nixon, Baker assured the president that Thompson was "tough. He's six feet five inches. He's a big mean fella."

"Smart?" asked Nixon.

"He's terribly smart," Baker replied.

But Nixon was not convinced. On March 16, 1973, he told Dean that "Dash is too smart for that kid," meaning Thompson, then 30 years old.

On June 6, 1973, Buzhardt -- the White House lawyer Thompson later tipped off about Butterfield's pending testimony about the tapes -- told Nixon that "we've got pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson."

"He isn't very smart, is he?" Nixon asked.

"He squeezed Gurney," Buzhardt said, referring to Sen. Edward Gurney, R-Fla. "Not extremely so, but --"

"But he's friendly," Nixon said.

"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed.

"Good," said Nixon.

"We're going to work with him over the weekend," Buzhardt said. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."

On June 11, 1973, Buzhardt told Nixon that the preparation had gone well.

"I found, uh, uh, Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day," Buzhardt said.

"Really?" asked Nixon.

"So he tells me," Buzhardt said, calling Thompson "perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination." He called him "far more cooperative really than I expected him to be. He's willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly."

"He realizes that Ervin, et al., and Dash are being totally political, does he?"

"Right," said Buzhardt, who then said that Thompson said he wanted to more aggressively defend the president but was being restrained by Baker. "[H]e says Baker's aware of it" -- how "political" things were getting -- "but he was quite candid with us; he thinks Baker will move much more slowly than he will let Thompson move."

"Right," said Nixon.

A few days after that conversation, Thompson's public question about Nixon's tapes -- regardless of his motivation -- helped bring about the end of the Nixon presidency, inadvertently or not.

"It's one of life's ironies that history gets twisted to show the vulgar is the noble," said Armstrong.