BROOKE GLADSTONE: During the dog days of '73, millions of Americans tuned in to daily hearings instead of daytime soaps, watching the plot unfold like a Perry Mason trial. The role of Perry Mason was played by Sam Dash, chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee. Dash says the made-for-TV drama of the hearings was no accident. He scripted the hearings like a detective story.

SAM DASH: Number one, it was my ordering of the witnesses. Having been a trial lawyer, I know that you -- you know, you begin a trial by starting at the very beginning. It's, it's like a detective story. In this particular case, there was the Watergate burglary; there were the cops that arrested the burglars. And then I would bring in a number of accusers like John Dean who had been counsel to the president who was pointing the finger at the president and Haldeman and Erlichman, and so I was setting up this tension of the police work, the work of the people who were involved as co-conspirators, who were accusing, and then ultimately bring the accused -- Haldeman, Mitchell, Erlichman -- and in order to make sure that our story would be told in a consecutive and interesting fashion, every witness that I called had been prior called, before an executive committee. In other words I knew exactly what my questions were going to be and I knew exactly what the answers were going to be so that I could put it in a form that this would come out like a story, and I think it, it succeeded in the sense that the American people were glued to their television sets waiting for the next episode.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So you crafted the arc of the story, and you rehearsed the witnesses. But what about the members of the Senate Watergate Committee themselves? You told the daily news that this cast of characters -- Sam Ervin and his committee members -- were chosen not because of their charisma and mass appeal but because of their presumed lack of it!

SAM DASH: Well, Senator Mansfield, who was majority leader at the time, told Ervin, and Ervin announced it while he was alive, that the members of the committee were chosen primarily because none of them would be a presidential candidate and therefore exploit the hearings for political purposes and that none of them really were ambitious to do anything more than what they were doing at the time. And so it was an unusual panel of senators who were devoted to trying to get at the truth. And at the same time not politicizing it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was the most dramatic moment do you think when the audience at the home in their living rooms was holding its breath?

SAM DASH:Well I think the most dramatic moment of the Senate Watergate Committee Hearings and for the world -- not only just the public -- is when we produced Mr. Butterfield who was an assistant to Mr. Haldeman but he was in charge of the Secret Service.

SENATOR: Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?

MR. BUTTERFIELD: I was aware of listening devices-- yes, sir.

SENATOR: When were those devices placed in the Oval Office?

MR. BUTTERFIELD: Approximately the summer of 1970. I cannot begin to recall the precise date.

SAM DASH: That was a Monday -- I remember - it was a Monday morning, and when he announced that he had put in this taping system in the Oval Office, it hit like a bombshell, because not only did it mean that we now had corroboration for what John Dean said -- John Dean had testified earlier about his meetings in the Oval Office with the president and the planning of the coverup -- but imagine, all over the world, heads of state who had met with the president in secret and had confided in the president to learn now that all of their meetings [LAUGHS] were taped-- it was a major earthquake in the world.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And that earthquake occurred almost exactly 30 years ago this past week. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

SAM DASH:Yes. And of course that earthquake got the president out of office, and, and I think what made it work that way was television, because we not only had the networks covering us during the day from 9 to 5 -- we had public television replaying the hearings at night --the whole hearings -- gavel to gavel! I wanted to get over the head of the print media and the radio and, and TV media because you know, they may be good, but they're selective. I had a message through my witnesses to tell the American people how their government had gone wrong and how we almost lost our democracy. And so by having television live, I was able to reach the American citizen in his home or bedroom or office, and they were there! By the millions they were listening.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What were the ratings during the peak period?

SAM DASH: I was told that our Nielsen ratings was above all the soaps.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Really!

SAM DASH: Yeah. We had the greatest attendance.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know Mr. Dash, we've been talking about the main characters in your drama, but we've neglected one -- that is to say -- you. The Philadelphia Enquirer noted recently that you are remembered for your Inherit-the-Wind-like [LAUGHTER] cross-examinations. And we have a clip from July 10th, 1973 when you faced off against Attorney General John Mitchell. It was about an intelligence plan pitched to Mitchell by G. Gordon Liddy to disrupt the Democrats. Here's Mitchell.

JOHN MITCHELL: Well I think it can be best described as a complete horror story that involved a mishmash of code names and lines of authority; electronic surveillance; the ability to intercept aircraft communications; the call girl bit and all the rest of it.

SAM DASH: Well when Liddy completed his presentation, what was your reaction?

JOHN MITCHELL: Well I think it was very simple. As I recall I told him to go burn the charts and that this was not what we were interested in; what we were interested in was a matter of information-gathering and the protection against the demonstrators.

SAM DASH: Well Mr. Mitchell if this was the kind of plan as you've described and has been described this way by other witnesses before this committee, and since you were the attorney general of the United States why didn't you throw Mr. Liddy out of your office?

JOHN MITCHELL: Well I think Mr. Dash in hindsight I not only should have thrown him out of the office; I should have thrown him out of the window.

SAM DASH: [LAUGHS] You know, Liddy -- after that meeting in the attorney general's office, who was very angry that they-- turned down his plan as given -- came back and told McCord what happened, and the real fact was that it is true that Liddy put on a number of different projects. One was to have call girls out on a yacht outside of Miami during the Democratic Convention and to lure the Democratic candidates on the yacht and have them seen with these prostitutes. And he had a budget for everything. And what Mitchell really said was: it's too expensive! It costs too much! Come back with a cheaper budget! And that's when Liddy went back and just came back with the break-in to the Watergate which Mitchell approved!

BROOKE GLADSTONE:As you look back, on subsequent hearings that were televised, we had Iran/Contra and you were involved yourself with Monicagate, were you not?

SAM DASH: That's right. Well not with the congressional hearings. I was the ethics counsel to Ken Starr.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do you think that those hearings compared to the Watergate hearings?

SAM DASH: The Iran/Contra hearing, the-- Campaign Financing hearing, the Whitewater hearings were atrocious! They were the wrong way to put on hearings to get the public to understand the scandal. They didn't begin at the beginning, and none of those subsequent hearings took the time to think through how they were going to inform the public. And it ended up with most of the public being angry at the committee in the Iran/Contra case and sympathizing with Ollie North! They didn't have Ollie North in executive session to determine what he was going to say. He refused to go! And they allowed him to get away with it! And so the very first time they were hearing answers were in that public hearing! And they couldn't control it! And they looked bad when they were trying to curtail him. I did advise before their hearings that they ought to begin at the beginning in Iran/Contra -- explain to the people who the Iranians were! Who the Contras were! What the issue was! They didn't!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well thank you very much.

SAM DASH: It's a pleasure.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Sam Dash is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He served as chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee Hearings, and I guess if you asked him he'd probably tell you that all he ever really wanted to do was direct.

SAM DASH: [LAUGHS] [THEME MUSIC] 58:00

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price, Katya Rogers, Megan Ryan, Tony Field and Sean Landis; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited by me. We had help from Blake Carlton, Josh Keating and Jenny Schneyer. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the show and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.