Cancer on the Presidency

The following excerpt from the Watergate tapes should be required reading in every high school history class in the United States.

DEAN: Right. Uh, so that's, that's it. That's
the, the extent of the knowledge. Now,
where, where are the soft spots on this?
Well, first of all, there's the, there's the
problem of the continued blackmail

PRESIDENT: Right.

DEAN: ...which will not only go on now, it'll goon
when these people are in prison, and it will
compound the obstruction of justice
situation. It'll cost money. It's
dangerous. Nobody, nothing--people around
here are not pros at this sort of thing.
This is the sort of thing Mafia people can
do: washing money, getting clean money, and
things like that, uh--we're--we just don't
know about those (noise) things, because
we're-not used to, you know--we are not
criminals and not used to dealing in that
business. It's, uh, it's, uh--

PRESIDENT: That's right.

DEAN: It's tough thing to know how to do.

PRESIDENT: Maybe we can't even do that.

DEAN: That's right. It's a real problem as to
whether we could even do it. Plus there's a
real problem in raising money. Uh, Mitchell
has been working on raising some money. Uh,
feeling he's got, you know, he's got one,
he's one of the ones with the most to lose.
Uh, but there's no denying the fact that the
White House, and uh, Ehrlichman, Haldeman,
Dean are involved in some of the early money
decisions.

PRESIDENT: How much money do you need?

DEAN: I would say these people are going to cost,
uh, a million dollars over the next, uh, -
two years. (Pause)

PRESIDENT: We could get that.

DEAN: Uh, huh.

PRESIDENT: You, on the money, if you need the money, I
mean, uh' you could get the money. Let's
say--

DEAN: Well, I think that we're going--

PRESIDENT: What I mean is, you could, you could get a
million dollars. And you could get it in
cash. I, I know where it could be gotten.

DEAN: Uh, huh.