Nixon Watergate testimony released

The Nixon Presidential Library, part of the National Archives, has released a transcript of former President Richard Nixon’s grand jury testimony about the Watergate scandal.

It’s the first grand jury proceedings featuring a former president testifying that have been made public, The Associated Press reported.

The transcript is a record of an interview that took place over two days in June 1975, about a year after the scandal forced Nixon to leave the White House, Reuters reported. Nixon answered questions, often sarcastically, that the Watergate Special Prosecution Force asked him in front of two grand jury members.

According to the AP:

Nixon's main legal risk during 11 hours of questioning near his California home in June 1975 was being caught in a lie. Short of committing perjury, or implicating anyone in his much-diminished cadre of loyalists, he could testify with impunity because a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford, protected him from prosecution for any past Watergate crimes.

In his testimony, Nixon maintained that a subpoenaed tape that might have contained incriminating information about his involvement in the Watergate complex break-in had been erased by mistake.

"Rose had thought it was four minutes, or something like that,'' Nixon told the investigators, referring to his secretary. "Now the counsel have found that it is 18 1/2 minutes, and I practically blew my stack.” He added, "If you are interested in my view as to what happened, it is very simple. It is that it was an accident.''

The transcript is part of a group of documents that historians sued to have released in order to provide the fullest picture possible of the Watergate incident, NBC reported.