Transcript: Chapter 07

News anchor (archival): Five men wearing white gloves and carrying cameras were caught earlier today in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. They apparently were unarmed and nobody knows yet why they were there.

Narrator: In November 1972, just shy of two years on the job, Bush was summoned to Camp David. It was five months after news reports at the Democratic Party election headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. "George," Bush recalled Nixon saying, "the place I really need you, is over at the National Committee running things. This is an important time for the Republican Party, George. We have a chance to build a new coalition in the next four years, and you're the one who can do it."

Barbara Bush: I sent him off saying, "Under no circumstances be Republican National Committee Chairman. It's just a no-end job. You'll be gone all the time. Please don't do that." So he went, and because he believes you never say no to a president, when President Nixon asked him to do that, he said yes.

George H. W. Bush (archival): What I want to do is build the party in a constructive positive image. The president is setting a good program for this. Our challenge is to implement it and to have room for diversity and to have room for growth, and I've got to go.

Lud Ashley: I said, "You've got this all wrong. I don't know what's happened to you, but you don't go from-from being the President's man at the United Nations to being chairman of a political party. You're coming down the ladder," and I said, "that's the wrong direction."

John Robert Greene: Nixon knew that it was about to hit the fan, and George Bush could be counted on for absolute loyalty in front of a camera. Nixon knew instinctively that as Watergate unfolded, as the disaster began to build, Bush could be counted on to stick by Nixon right through until the bitter end.

Narrator: Less than a month after Bush took the job, the Senate established a Watergate Committee to hold hearings on the break-in.

Senator Ervin: ...begins hearings into the extent to which illegal, improper and unethical activities were involved in the 1972 presidential election campaign.

Narrator: As the scandal unfolded, Bush traveled to 33 states and made 190 appearances defending the president and the Republican Party.

George H. W. Bush (archival): As you look across the country, the Watergate has not obscured the positive record of this administration.

John Robert Greene: When he goes out in front of a television camera for Richard Nixon, George Bush has the perfect public face. The other part about Bush that the Nixon White House liked was his combative nature with the press. And the press was just beginning to feel its oats in 1973. Bush was not going to let them get away, in his mind, with this type of picking on the President.

George H. W. Bush (archival): The President has said that he is not involved in Watergate. That he didn't know about it, that he is not involved in the cover up. And I accept that, and I don't think it helps the stability of the forward progress of the country to speculate hypothetically when the man had made that statement.

Barbara Bush: Nixon lied to George. George couldn't believe someone would look you in the eye and say, "I had nothing to do with this. I have not lied."

Peter Roussel: I can remember, because I was there with him, I can remember many of our friends and, you know, wise men and politicos that were around then, saying, "That's the end of Bush's career. That's the end of George Bush. His time's over." And certainly the media had written him off.

Chase Untermeyer, presidential aide, 1989-91: I think of all the things that George Bush did prior to being asked to run for vice-president with Ronald Reagan, being chairman of the Republican National Committee during Watergate was the most valuable, because during that miserable time for grassroots Republicans, there was George Bush keeping up the faith and trying to keep people's spirits up.

Senator Howard Baker (archival): Tell me what the president knew and when he first knew it.

John Dean (archival): At a meeting on September 15th ...

Narrator: Testimony from Nixon staffers on June 3, 1973 marked the beginning of revelations that would bring the President down. "I've never seen such an unhappy man as George was during this period," a White House insider recalled. "because now all of us had come to the conclusion that we'd all been lied to for many, many months." Bush fumed in his diary, "This era of tawdry, shabby lack of morality has got to end," Bush wrote in his diary. "I am sick at heart. Sick about the President's betrayal and sick about the fact that the major Nixon enemies can now gloat because they have proved he is what they said he is."

Herbert Parmet: Bush was caught up in it. Bush was embarrassed by it, and the thing he told me embarrassed him most of all was, he had given assurances to fundraisers that Nixon was not involved. Nixon let him down.

Narrator: On August 6, 1974 Bush attended a cabinet meeting. Nixon's agenda was to talk about the economy.

John Robert Greene: Ford turned to the President and said, "We have other issues that we have to discuss. We have to discuss the fate of this presidency." George Bush stood up, interrupted Nixon and told him that Watergate was sapping public confidence in the party and the county. The next day he advised Nixon to resign. "Dear Mr. President," he wrote, "I expect in your lonely embattled position this would seem to you as an act of disloyalty from one you have supported and helped in so many ways." George Bush had accepted the party chairman's job because of his loyalty to Nixon. That loyalty, Nixon found to his dismay, had its limits.