Is this the truth you were skirting??

Question: How did Howard Baker describe the then-unknown Fred Thompson to Richard Nixon prior to the beginning of the Watergate hearings?

Answer: "a Tennessee lawyer with brass balls"

Fred Thompson, the next President of the US, might have been unknown to the nation, but fellow Tennessean Howard Baker had certainly heard of Fred's cojones. As it turned out, Fred the real lawyer got to ask the question that sealed Richard Nixon's fate. The existence of tape recordings made with Nixon's White House bugging devices was made public. From the Watergate hearings transcripts via CNN:
In July of 1973, Fred Thompson, then a Republican attorney for the Senate Watergate committee, (and now a Republican senator from Tennessee), called on a surprise witness, Alexander Butterfield. Butterfield was a former aide to White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. The exchange:

Thompson: "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"

Butterfield: "I was aware of listening devices, yes sir.