"we'll just take some chances"

 Nixon:  It's a conspiracy, Bob.  What do you think?

Haldeman:  Absolutely.

Nixon:  Goddammit.  If they're going to go to this length, we're gonna fight with everything we've got.  We'll just take some chances.

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[voice of Dwight Chapin]

Was Nixon paranoid?  Yes.  And - he took on this self-survival cloak.  And that led to other things happening.

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        That's what caught my attention, and what I wanted to talk about. - The idea that President Nixon's reaction to the Pentagon Papers actually led to the whole Watergate incident.

        He gets all excited and upset, and it really isn't even his problem.

        He seems to take the "leak" of the Pentagon Papers personally.  But it isn't about him.

        (Something I notice when I listen to Nixon speak is, he refers to himself a lot.  

        I don't say that as a criticism, really.  Maybe all of us humans are a little bit self-obsessed at times.  But if I was Nixon's speechwriter, I would have put some other stuff in there for him to say, instead.)

When you listen to those conversations right after the Pentagon Papers' publication, you can hear the president kind of like - creating an alternate reality, by talking.  

        If you think about it, you can notice people do that sometimes.  They keep talking and the more they talk, the more they paint a picture which may or may not be true.

He is really - upsetting himself.  Making up a private war against his "enemies."  In his imagination.  

In the 1995 film Nixon, the president's wife says to him, "It's as if you're at war with the whole world!"

-30-