>> Kevin Butterfield:
Good afternoon.
I'd like to bring things
to order. And to begin
today's events,
please join me in welcoming
the Librarian of Congress,
Doctor Carla Hayden.
[Applause]
>> Carla Hayden:
And thank you, Kevin.
And good afternoon, everyone.
It's my pleasure to welcome you
all to the Library of Congress
this afternoon as we
commemorate
a significant moment
in American history.
The staff of the 1974 inquiry
into the impeachment of
President Richard Nixon were
faced with an enormous task.
At a time when American faith 
in the presidency was shaken,
as staff, you had to work to
help the 93rd Congress decide
whether President Nixon's
actions required him to face the
second presidential impeachment
in American history, and the
first in 100 years.
While President Nixon resigned
before impeachment went forward,
the adoption by the House
Judiciary Committee of three
articles of impeachment during
the summer of 1974 was hugely
important in setting the events
of the following months in
motion. Now, many historians
mark this era as the beginning
of a decline of trust in
American institutions, but it is
also a story of functioning
checks and balances. In your
roles as congressional
staffers, lawyers and
researchers, you worked as
staff to find the truth of
whether President Nixon had
obstructed justice and abused
power, and, if so, how he
should be held to account.
And that work helped shape
American history.
So we are very pleased to see
all of you gathered here today
to reflect on this momentous
occasion 50 years later.
We're eager to hear how you
look back on that time now after
distinguished careers in law,
academia and politics.
And I'd like to thank the John
W. Kluge Center
for hosting the event.
[Applause]
The Kluge Center is the
library's in-house center for
scholarship and research, and
each year they bring around 100
scholars to use the library's
collections to produce exciting
new work. So today we'll have
two panel discussions.
The first will focus on the
legacy of the inquiry, and the
second will consider what it is
like and what it was like to be
there. So now, to get us
started, I'd like to introduce
Doctor Timothy Naftali, who
will moderate the first panel.
Doctor Naftali is a
presidential historian at the
Institute of Global Politics at
Columbia University's School of
International and Public
Affairs.
He was also the first director
of the federal Richard Nixon
Presidential Library and
Museum.
Please join me in welcoming
him.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali:
First of all, I would like to
thank the Librarian of Congress,
Doctor Hayden.
I'd like to thank Doctor
Butterfield of the Kluge Center,
and I'd like to thank the
organizing committee
for this great event.
The two representatives I spoke
with Evan Davis, who's on the
panel, and Mike Conway.
Thank you.
I've asked the panelists to
start with a few minutes of
reflection on the legacy of the
impeachment inquiry and any
takeaways that they'd like to
share.
And then after we go through
each of the panelists, we'll
have a group discussion.
So, Francis O'Brien, start us
off, please.
>> Francis O'Brien:
Hi, my name is Francis O'Brien.
I'm meeting 90% of you the
first time because I worked for
the chairman on his personal
staff, and I wasn't allowed to
meet any of you
by John Doar's rule
because we pollute you.
So now I'm going to try to
 repollute you.
So I want to set the scene
a little bit.
So 1972 was the election,
 President Nixon won again.
There was a little known
election that took place that
year. A young woman out of
Brooklyn named Liz Holtzman,
ran against a
congressman for 50 years named
Manny Celler. And Manny Celler
was a true hero of the civil
rights era, bringing all this
civil rights legislation to
fore. But Manny Celler
lost to this young woman out of
Brooklyn and I think and I can
be corrected.
I think her campaign was run by
Bernie Nussbaum.
And I don't know if that's
accurate, but that's what...
>> Richard Gill: He was
her lawyer in the contest.
>> Francis O'Brien:
Was he? Okay.
All right, so that sets
up
Peter Rodino next in line,
becomes the chairman of the
committee. Now,
outside of Congress,
nobody knew Peter Rodino.
Inside,
he had been a member for 25
years, respected on both sides
of the aisle, well-liked,
a liberal politician out of
Newark, New Jersey.
And to set the scene,
so the Watergate Committee
started its investigation after
the election. On the house side
and Tim can correct me here.
No one even thought of
impeachment.
So all of while the Watergate
hearing was going, I believe
during that whole period in '73,
maybe one, maybe two articles
were introduced, maybe John
Conyers and maybe Bob Drinan,
maybe. It just was not even
contemplated that something that
was in the Constitution
would ever be used.
Certainly the chairman,
no idea. It never came up in...
Well, the Watergate hearings
were going on, I
was in his personal staff was
never talked about. The
Saturday night firings took
place and everything,
absolutely everything
in the world changed.
And everybody here can say,
oh, I remember where I was, etc.
and all of that. Anyway, I was
I hadn't been in New York that
weekend. I came back and
everything did change.
And impeachment came on
the front burner and the
Speaker, Carl Albert and
Majority
Leader Tip O'Neill and the other
leadership decided
that they would go
forward with an inquiry.
It was voted on by the House
and that it would reside in the
Judiciary Committee, and that
Peter Rodino would,
as chairman, 
run the committee.
Now inside Congress, 
inside the house,
that was a good choice.
They had a lot.
The speaker and the majority
leader and the other leaders had
great respect for him.
He met some opposition from
sort of the most activist
members of the party and from
outsiders who didn't know him.
But the decision was made.
There was no doubt that he
would take over. That period,
Peter Rodino, in my view, and
my relationship with him, had no
thought that this president
would ever be impeached.
He just thought that it just
was not possible.
And you think and
that's where we began.
A decision was made soon after
that...
we would hire a separate staff
to do the investigation.
And that's all of you.
The chairman then decided
that John Doar would be the
leader of that
undertaking.
And then I think the rest of
the group here will go in
detail. I just have one minor
story before I turn it back to
you folks, a John Doar story.
So after John was chosen and
trying to, under extraordinary
pressure, put this team
together.
John was very sensitive
that he wanted to make sure that
only the best were hired.
The most competent people,
the most non activists.
He used that word a lot. He
didn't want any activist.
Just like the chairman. It was
very important that you don't
hire somebody who was
just dead on...
in getting Richard Nixon
out of office.
John like we all do,
he went to people he knew to
try to find
the various staff members.
John had a hard time dealing
with that.
This was actually a
congressional undertaking and
that Congress people would have
a voice in who they'd hire. So
and the chairman for those you
know, he never said and Ronna
knows he never said anything
directly.
But I knew what he wanted.
So there's this pile of
resumes...
you amongst them was
sitting on my desk and that's
all. He just would put these
resumes on my desk.
And they were resumes from
highly qualified
individuals that the speaker,
the majority leader and other
members of Congress wanted to
at least have them interviewed.
And we were having some
challenges on this front.
So one Friday night, John came
over.
We did usual
housekeeping stuff.
And I thought, I have to deal
with this.
So I'm thinking in my mind, how
am I going to approach John on
this subject? So I said, hmm,
so let me...
So I said, "John, the
chairman, think about bubbles
ahead of my head over here."
So I'm thinking I'm
trying to think ahead
what John... how John's going to
react.
So I said, "The chairman is just
extraordinarily pleased with the
folks you've hired so
far, the speed, the quality."
He just couldn't
be more impressed.
So that's the intro.
Now I had to get to this.
I said, "Now the chairman wants
to make sure you hire a diverse
staff." So I thought in my mind.
I know what he's going to say.
He didn't say that.
He looked at me and he said,
"What do you mean 
by the word diverse?"
So I thought for a minute.
I said, "How about we start not
from Yale?"
[Laughing]
He almost
smiled and thought better of it.
By the way, I love all you
people from Yale.
But anyway, I'll turn it
back to you, Tim,
and go from there.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali:
Boola boola. Richard Gill.
>> Richard Gill: I'm not sure 
exactly how I got chosen.
If you look at the
Congressional Quarterly that
published it, it had a page
that said the chiefs and the
Indians and of the
chiefs, such as it was the only
three of us still alive, and
that's Evan and me and
Judge Bob Sack. 
So I guess we were
the... we are the,
 "Senior chiefs."
But we were never
chiefs in the organization.
We never thought of that.
It wasn't structured that way.
Everybody worked on whatever
they needed to work on.
And they were... that
title was kind of a standing
joke among us, but I did
bring something before I
because Bob Shelton
said something, said,
"Think about stories
we're talking to each other."
We were all there.
So we've all experienced the
same things.
And so it's not a
revelation to an audience of
strangers. But I thought y'all
people would like
to remember something historic.
How many of you remember these?
This one's getting a
little yellowed and tattered,
but this is the kind of...
this is the work product.
And we all remember so well
passing out to the congressmen
all those volumes of these.
I think there were 38 of them
in all.
And so this I don't know
how many of these survive, but,
I think this group
would understand and appreciate
it. I do know quickly we were
asked to talk about legacy, and
I don't know that I know
exactly how to quantify this.
We knew, and I say we,
John Doar knew and the chairman
knew and then eventually passed
to all of us that this was not
going to be conducted like a
typical congressional hearing
where people are lined.
The witnesses come before the
committees.
They're questioned by
congressmen, most of whom don't
know very many facts, but
they've got some...
bullet point sheets in front of
them and it's hostile.
This one's trying to score
points on this side.
And this one's trying to score
points on that side.
And it kind of ends up leading
to nothing.
And we were told this is not
going to be like that.
We are not prosecutors.
We are lawyers representing a
client, the client being the
Judiciary Committee as a whole,
not the Republicans, not the
Democrats. And we're going to
find out what the facts are.
And it was an inquiry into
whether or not the facts led to
congressman, because we didn't
get to vote on it, would lead
congressman to vote to impeach
the president.
And John Doar was very serious
about that.
And as Francis said, if you
came to the job with an idea, I
want to get the president, you
would not be hired.
It was just that clear. That
was a disqualifying attitude,
because you were there to find
out what facts were.
We forget we don't....
this group doesn't forget, there
were hundreds of thousands of
undigested pages that the
Senate Select Committee had
gathered. There were 
depositions,
there were documents,
thousands of them.
And there were 56 different
things that the president was
accused of that had to be
investigated and determined what
the actual facts about it were.
And so that was our task to
start with.
And so that legacy of finding
out what the truth is was the
first thing I would say.
And John Doar was absolutely
meticulous.
You didn't write something down
and put it in one of these
notebooks as if it were a fact.
Unless you had back up
documents, back up sworn
testimony right behind every
statement that's in there,
remember, they became known as
statements of information
because you didn't even want to
argue that they were facts.
They were information, but the
information had to be verified
and it wouldn't get in there.
And we weren't to speculate,
we weren't to make surmises, we
weren't to make assumptions.
And so that kind of method or
manner of approaching it is one
of the legacies that I think
this group can be proud of.
And the other was nobody knew
what an impeachable offense was.
There's no standard in the
Constitution that is precise.
It uses some words, but they
largely derived from English
parliamentary history and the
the Andrew Johnson
impeachment was always a farce.
It was a statute created to
bait the president and to
violating it, and then say he
could be impeached because he
violated the Tenure of Office
Act. So it was no help.
And so there was a whole staff
charged with trying to define
it. And the answer ended up,
and this is the other legacy.
It has to be something serious
affecting the function of the
constitutional order of the
government.
Impeachment is a part of the
checks and balances built into
the Constitution.
And it's not for political
[inaudible] and or revenge one
party against the other, like
the Venetian Republic
or Florentine Republic,
where a dominant party in
Congress uses it as a weapon
to get at their political
enemies.
It's got to be something more
serious.
It's not just a common law
crime.
It's for something affecting
the function of state.
And it should not be entered
into lightly or as a matter
of political tactics.
That's the only other part
of the legacy I would
 comment on, so.
>> Timothy Naftali: Thank you, 
Mr. Gill.
[Applause]
Secretary Clinton.
>> Hillary Clinton:
Well, I want to pick up where
Richard ended, because I think
those are two really important
pieces of the legacy.
You know, looking back at
it,
this was such an
extraordinary undertaking.
And the charge that Chairman
Rodino gave to John Doar and the
way that the House established
the impeachment inquiry so that
it was something that was
legitimately meant to conduct an
inquiry, figure out whether
there is any basis for
recommendations by the
Judiciary Committee with respect
to articles of impeachment and
the way that John Doar
structured us, the way he
terrified us about keeping
everything to ourselves and
never talking to anybody about
anything. The way the
statements of information was
established as the basis of
trying to compile, catalogue and
eventually try to
understand patterns within
those statements of information
with respect to what they would
reveal to the staff.
All of that was very
deliberately designed in order
to run as careful a process
without any
preexisting judgment
as possible.
I think it succeeded.
I think in every way
that I know of,
looking back at it,
probably we were aided by the
absence of cell phones so that
reporters yelled at us
as we left our offices very
occasionally to get something to
eat or get a little air.
But there was a real sense of
obligation among the staff about
what we were expected not only
to do, but how we were
supposed to conduct ourselves.
And the challenge of trying
to define, number one,
what is an impeachable offense?
What is a high crime or
misdemeanor?
Led to a lot of really
interesting discussions back and
forth as people were
attempting to
present that and come up with
some substantive basis on which
the committee and eventually
the Congress and the
country could understand it.
And there was a lot of
reflecting back on common law
looking... someone once
suggested and it turned out to
be a very intriguing way
to approach it, that the
Declaration of Independence
laid out all these grievances
against King George.
And those grievances were long
lists of about how he had abused
his power with respect to
treating the people in the
colonies. And that became a
kind of interesting way to take
the English
common law look at what early
Americans had done in their
efforts to try to justify
their actions because
of what they viewed as abuses of
power from the monarch.
So we had to come up with a
memo that did describe that.
And then we had to figure out,
well, how do we proceed?
What is the process?
I mean, who does what?
How do you make a presentation?
What is the inquiry staff
supposed to be doing with
respect to a presentation of
these statements of information
to the committee? And that went
through several iterations,
because I think John
Doar's original idea was we were
going to present a bunch of
briefing books to the committee,
and the committee was, well,
you got to tell us what you
think about that. You can't
just give us hundreds, thousands
of pages of
statements of information.
You have to help us figure out
what we're supposed to make of
it and what is the procedure we
are supposed to be using.
And I remember going
over to the Congress with
John and Joe Woods, and because
I'd been working on the
procedures, they invited me to
go along.
And having John and
Joe explained to the committee
how we were going to be working
in order to make a presentation
to them once we had gathered up
sufficient facts.
A lot of that was both
accelerated and deepened
when we got the tapes.
And that added an enormous
amount of both information and
context that
led to the senior
staff being able to
try to consolidate whatever
presentation they were going to
make to the committee.
I think back on this
as something that's almost hard
to imagine right now.
It was a bipartisan staff.
In addition to John Doar,
you had Bert Jenner who'd
been appointed by the
Republican members.
You had a very well
integrated staff.
And most ways,
Bill Weld and I
worked on things together from
nearly the beginning of the
process, and it was so
carefully constructed and people
were so imbued with a
sense of responsibility that
it was a great honor.
I mean, it was such an honor to
be part of something that was
so well envisioned by John and
the senior lawyers,
the chiefs, as it were.
And it was such an honor to see
the very deep care
that was taken in
working
on this incredibly
serious matter.
And so I really think of it as
a legacy that we do need to try
to better explain and have the
public and members of Congress
understand. And I don't want to
sound like I'm going
to start singing from Camelot.
But there once was a time
when a Democratic majority
Congress put together a process
that included Republicans from
the beginning that was led by
extraordinary lawyers with a
deep sense of reverence for the
Constitution and a commitment to
trying to enter into this
important endeavor in a way that
was above reproach so that
whatever happened and nobody had
prejudged it. So we didn't know
what would happen.
Whatever happened would be
seen as credible, as legitimate.
And honestly, I think, you
know, so much credit goes first
of all to Chairman Rodino, but
then to John and everyone who,
both created and managed
this process.
So I'm really grateful to the
library, Carla, and to the Kluge
Center, Kevin, that you are
helping to elevate this and to
Evan and Mike and others who
thought about making this
possible because we
need to tell these stories.
The final thing I would quickly
say is and Carla,
Kevin and some of their team
members and I were talking about
this earlier. We really have a
problem with people not knowing
history and not knowing what
actually happened.
And it's something
that I think is influencing
adversely a lot of the
decisions that we are seeing
either made or not made now.
And so anything that can try to
raise the visibility and create
a better understanding of what
happened 50 years ago, I think
is beneficial on a number of
fronts.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali:
Thank you, Secretary Clinton.
How about that, Francis?
When Secretary Clinton
mentioned Rodino,
she looked at you. 
Rufus Cormier.
>> Rufus Cormier: 
When Timmy called
and indicated that we would be
talking about legacy and
takeaways from the Watergate
experience, I thought that I
would take an approach a little
bit different from the other
panelists.
I had graduated from Yale Law
School in '73 and joined Paul,
Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and
Garrison in New York and had
been there less than six
months.
When I received a call on a
Saturday morning, a totally
unexpected call from John Doar,
who had been a great hero of
mine by virtue of his
involvement with the Civil
Rights Division of the Justice
Department.
And John indicated to me that
he had been selected as special
counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee
for the Nixon
impeachment inquiry.
And he asked me one question,
which was whether I had taken
any position with respect to
the impeachment of President
Nixon. And when my answer was
no, he stated that then he
wanted me to join his staff as
one of his two special
assistants. I mentioned that
John was a great hero of mine,
and in order for you to
understand that, I wanted to
take the approach of giving you
some detail about my background.
I grew up in Beaumont, Texas,
in the 50s and 60s in complete
segregation.
I knew no more than eight whites
by name along when my wife
Yvonne, who's here today as
well, and I enrolled at SMU in
1966. That was the second year
that SMU had any Black students.
There were 11 student, Black
students at the time we
enrolled. Three in the class
that preceded me, and eight in
our class out of an enrollment
of 10,000 students.
I was also one of the three
Black scholarship athletes who
signed that year to play
football in the Southwest
Conference after SMU signed
the first Black player
in the conference in 1965.
So meaningful change in the
status of African Americans in
the South started to occur
after the Supreme Court decision
in Brown versus the Board of
Education in 1954,
when I was six years old.
That case had little immediate
effect on segregated schools in
the South. However, Brown
elevated the civil rights
movement to a matter of
national priority, and that led
to ultimately to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Without those developments, my
life would have taken a very
different route after finishing
high school.
Now, John Doar played a pivotal
role in all of the civil rights
developments other than the
Brown case itself, through his
work with the Justice
Department.
While serving in the Civil
Rights Division
among many other things, John
had tried and or directed the
trials of numerous voting
rights cases in the South.
He escorted James Meredith onto
the campus of the University of
Mississippi after his court
ordered admission to Ole Miss.
He helped to protect Doctor
King and the Freedom Riders
Freedom Walkers from Selma to
Montgomery.
He directed the trial of the
murderers of the civil rights
workers Goodman, Schwerner, and
Chaney in Mississippi.
And he insisted he assisted
with the drafting of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of '65.
John Lewis once said that Dora
gave civil rights workers a
reason not to give up on those
in power.
So John was already a genuine
hero of mine as a result of his
courageous civil rights work
when I joined the
inquiry staff in early '74.
Working with John had a greater
influence on the way I
approached the practice of law
than any other person that I
have met or have known.
So the greatest takeaway that I
came away with the... from the
impeachment inquiry was
the experience that I had
working with John Doar.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali: Thank you,
 Mr. Cormier. Evan Davis.
>> Evan Davis:
So there's no doubt that
John Doar is a 
national treasure.
Just a remarkable person who
achieved so much in civil rights
and who brought about an
impeachment proceeding that was
perceived by the country as
fair.
And that's not an easy thing to
do.
We had partisan people on the
committee.
Wiggins from California.
Dennis from Indiana.
But we worked through with a
solution that came from the
center that was perceived by
the country to be fair and just.
And we also... I think secretary
Clinton, I think we improved the
standing of the United States
internationally through what we
did. Nixon, President Nixon.
Never say Nixon, doctor told us
we always had to say President
Nixon.
President Nixon was a big
player internationally.
And so when he resigned,
and by the way, no impeachment
provision, no resignation
because he resigned, because he
was going to be convicted in the
Senate. So I took a trip, a
speaking trip, after working on
the impeachment, and I went to
India and I was in Kerala state,
which is a communist state in
India.
And they were dumbfounded that
a capitalist society ruled by
money could actually do
something that had a basis in
integrity. And then
I went to England,
and the English are
generally skeptical.
And they were very amazed that
someone was removed from office
for a cover up because from
their point of view, a cover up
was an everyday sort of thing.
And I think that's one of the
major takeaways, that a cover up
of criminal conduct is
definitely
an impeachable offense. 
Thank you.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali: Thank you,
Evan. Governor Weld.
>> William Weld:
Well, I feel lucky to be here.
You see, I'm a diversity hire.
[Laughing]
Harvard College and Harvard Law
School.
[Laughing]
That'll do it every time.
[Laughing]
So I thought Dick Nixon could 
have had a pretty good run as
president of the United States,
you know?
So sue me, I'm a moderate
Republican.
I thought he had
a lot of potential.
He comes back from the war in
1946.
Him and Jack Kennedy are
classmates together.
They knew each other.
They had a fair amount in
common.
They talked. They talked a lot.
By anybody's estimation, he
would have been considered
a potential star in the
Republican Party.
Definitely on the
moderate as opposed to the
hidebound end.
He gets into office.
I remember my
first year in practice, 1971.
He's putting in wage and
price controls. This is Nixon.
Environmentally,
I'm a big environmentalist.
We got the Clean Air Act and
the Clean Water Act.
We got Ruckelshaus.
We got Bill O'Reilly.
We got great Republican
environmentalists.
Things are... I
thought looking pretty good
for him. You might have
forgotten a couple of things
along the way, but we'll
get to that in good time.
One thing I know, he forgot
that I read about in Bob Caro's
book about Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson, at the height of his
powers, was lecturing some
aspirant to the presidency.
And he said, "Son, you got to
remember one thing.
There's a bond between the
president of the United States
and the people of the United
States, and it's a bond of
trust. And if you lose that
bond of trust once for five
minutes, you're never going to
get it back.
And I think Johnson was right
about that. Unlike me Mr. Nixon
had not majored in Latin,
which I did both at college
in the United States and then
pursued so-called greats, Latin
and Greek in England
thereafter.
So I was serious about it,
including the mottos that are
dotted around the buildings in
this town, including the one at
10th in Pennsylvania, where I
spent a couple of years as head
of the criminal division.
But one of them is suprema
lex salus populi and loosely
translated, that is that
the highest exigency of the
law and law being supreme over
everything else that is the
refuge of the people.
So law is like a house
you can hide in.
I don't think Nixon
saw that the right way.
I'm not sure that he ever went
by the Justice Department and
read government of laws and not
of men on the building.
But for those of us who worked
there, it was easy not to
forget that one.
So I thought he was doing okay.
And then in 1972, you get
this stupid break in and
you know, it's a third rate
burglary.
And so, but there's a
certain amount of kerfuffle
about it. So Archibald Cox gets
appointed a special prosecutor.
I figure this is going to take
care of that.
Archie Cox taught me
constitutional law at...
I'm sorry, Harvard.
[Laughing]
And he's a
pretty smart guy.
I thought so that would
really take care of
that. In the middle of
1973, I got a query,
a friendly inquiry whether I
would like to go to Washington
and maybe work on the anti
Nixon side of things,
Watergate. And I said
"My mother and I are
going to be two people on the
Watergate jury if there ever is
one, because neither one of us
has paid any attention to all
the publicity because we didn't
have a television in our house."
And they said, "Oh, well, I
guess maybe you're not the
right person for this."
So I didn't go down and take
that job.
Then later, more like
September, I get another call.
Would you like to come to
Washington and work?
Maybe not on the Nixon side
as Moorfield Storey, a
famous Bostonian, did before
you and for an
impeachment.
And I asked a friend of mine,
William Morehead, who is a
senior member of Congress, a
Democrat, a committee chair.
I believe his advice, he said,
"Don't go near it.
This thing is going absolutely
nowhere.
And everyone who has banded
together publicly on the
anti Nixon side is going to be
destroyed."
This is the middle August,
July.
And as Francis O'Brien
said, people were not thinking
around the country.
Were not thinking the
impeachment. They were not
thinking Nixon was going to be
removed, so I declined that
job, too, although something
happened that made
me a little bit nervous.
The president gave a speech
which came to be known as the
child and the family speech.
And he said the average
American is like a child in the
family. And he wants
to be left alone to live his own
life and be guided by others.
But really, he's an average
American, is like a child.
So I'm thinking now, what's his
conception of the relationship
between government and the
people?
And I thought, it probably
means the government is up here
taking care of things, and the
average American is down there
like a child and the family
just going
about their everyday business.
But when a real call has to be
made, it's going to
be the government making that
call.
That kind of didn't suit with
my politics.
And only one organization that I
saw, saw it the same way, The
New Yorker magazine, which I
tell you, I think they have been
the conscience of the
United States since the days of
Harold Ross. And in the 30s,
William Shawn, who took over in
the 50s and to this day with
David Remnick.
So they wrote in talk
of the town,
they wrote about the child and
the family speech, and they were
nervous, they were nervous too.
But anyway, I didn't take
that job.
I took Mr. Moorehead's
advice.
And Archie Cox gets
appointed a special prosecutor,
and I figure that takes care of
things.
And so then Alexander
Butterfield is talking in
Congress about something
totally unrelated throw away
question. And by the way, there
were no tapes ever taken of
anything in the White House,
were there?
He says, "Well, actually,
everything was taped from stem
to stern. There's a tape of
everything that was ever said in
the White House," and people
said "Well, that's interesting."
And Mr. Cox issues a 
subpoena for the tapes.
And this is where I began to
have to I think my office mate
and I began to have to study
this because that was resisted
on the grounds of executive
privilege.
And that didn't really fly
all that well with
Judge Gesell and the D.C.
District court judges.
And they didn't really
agree with Mr. Nixon's
position there.
But so he declines.
And then Cox persists and
said, "I must have those tapes."
And it's getting to be
October.
And I'm still thinking, gosh,
it's anybody's guess what's
going to happen here.
And then, as I think Francis
O'Brien again said, October 20th
comes and everybody's fired.
Archie Cox is fired.
Elliot Richardson refuses to
fire him,
he's gone. Bill Ruckelshaus
refuses to fire him.
He's gone. Cox is gone.
And the others are gone as
well.
And it's an entirely new, new
ball game.
And the staff of Archie Cox,
the day after he was fired, held
a press conference. And they
said, and I think I quote more
or less, whether or not this
country will continue to be
governed by a government of
laws and not of men, depends now
upon the Congress and
ultimately the American people.
Well, truer words were never
spoken.
And that's exactly
what happened.
So along the struggle, the
way to try to get these tapes.
Nixon, I remember at one point
proposed that the so-called
Stennis compromise, which is
that Senator John Stennis,
who was not going to be up to
this job, was going to review
all the tapes and tell the
world exactly what was in them.
And that and I think J.
Fred Buzhardt was
instrumental in proposing that.
And Nixon
thought that was a pretty
good idea. And let's be honest,
that was nothing but an open
invitation to be fobbed off the
real issue.
And if I had to put in one
sentence, what is the signal
achievement of the Rodino
committee and the staff and
everybody that worked together
in those months, it
was not being fobbed off the
issue. And indeed, the phrase
laser like intensity springs to
mind as we went about our
business.
And I think that's a major
contribution not only to the
jurisprudence, but to the
policy of the United States.
And the principle is now, as a
result of that, firmly
established that no man is
above the law.
And it's not even just the
Supreme Court saying it in the
tapes case where I think they
said it, but it's established
now in the society.
At least I hope it is.
And I think the fact that it
is ingrained and it's in
the collective conscious
consciousness of the country, in
the water table, so to speak,
couldn't be more important.
And I think the fact that
it's so well established is
going to be enable us to
have a happy result
rather than the opposite
this coming November.
And that's really important.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
>> Timothy Naftali:
Thank you, Governor Weld.
I was going to... I was
thinking about people who were
going to watch this, and they
might not be as hopeful as the
governor just was.
And I was going to ask you what
it was about the climate of
1973, '74 that made your kind of
inquiry possible?
Given that I think for many
young Americans, what you've
just described sounds
impossible or unlikely.
>> Richard Gill:
I think something happened that
we see occasionally, people
rise to the occasion.
Chairman Rodino turned out
to be a great man and a great
leader. And John Doar was
already a great man.
But the committee as a whole,
they were partisans on both ends
who were rabid. But in
general, the great bulk of those
38 lawyers took it seriously 
and realized
they were in a unique
circumstance that had never
really occurred in the country
at all. The Johnson one didn't
count, and for the most part,
they rose to the occasion.
Now, whether that could
happen now, I don't know.
But there were people.
Jack Brooks was one.
Delbert Latta was one on the
opposite side.
They were utter partisans.
I mean, they were hardcore,
either right or left, but the
committee didn't let that drive
their deliberations.
And you can read the speeches
that the committee members made.
And they are moderate.
They are thoughtful.
They recognize the importance
of what they were doing.
And you hope that that
human nature of rising to a
crisis would carry forward
and even in these times.
>> Timothy Naftali:
Rufus.
>> Rufus Cormier:
I was just going to say that
that is exactly what has been
identified is a concern that I
have, that the work that was
done by the inquiry committee
was widely and generally
accepted
by the citizenry of the
United States.
Because of the huge
division that's now in this
country, it will be...
it is a question as to whether
or not we can make arrive at a
result, as was arrived at in
that circumstance, that there
was a sense that
the president was held
accountable for what had
happened. It was 
further believed that,
as the governor indicated
that the principle that no man
was above the law was vindicated
by the decision that was made.
I think that there was a sense
that checks and balances had
worked. The free press had
performed in the way that it had
been intended that it would.
That after the resignation that
there was legislation that
attempted to deal with
the issue of surveillance that
made the requirements for
obtaining a warrant much more
difficult.
That laws were passed that
attempted to deal with the slush
funds and other funding that
was being provided in politics,
so that there were laws,
campaign finance laws to
attempt to deal with that.
As well as...
laws that were intended to
address some of the corruption
and to try to nip that kind of
thing in the bud.
But John Doar, when he
initiated the investigation,
made it absolutely clear that
it was going
to be completely non-partisan.
He indicated to us that we were
not there to make a case against
President Nixon, but rather to
determine
whether or not there was a case.
And throughout the inquiry,
John continued to insist that
that was exactly the case, that
the staff was not to
make any decisions respecting
the president, but to
provide the facts for the
committee to ultimately address
that issue. And I think that a
part of that success was the
greatness of John Doar and the
kind of leadership he provided.
And that he was so absolutely
fair.
And Chairman Rodino was
as well.
And as a result of that, I
think the public accepted the
decision that had been made by
the committee.
But given the degree of
partisanship that governs at
this time, I think it
would be much more difficult to
avoid that becoming a part of
any examination
of what a party person had done.
Now hopefully we would
ultimately...
apply and the abstract
principles that we
believe in. It is still a
concern that this partisanship
will result in a significant
percentage of people whose
greatest loyalty will be to
partisanship
or to what in effect,
tribalism, rather than looking
at the facts. And hopefully 
that would not be the case.
But I think that there is
certainly a valid concern that
the inquiry that was done in
1974 could not be carried out in
the way that it was then in the
current environment.
>> William Weld:
Well, Watergate was
not the first piece of ugliness
in American political history.
Back in the 50s, 1954,
Tailgunner Joe McCarthy of
Wisconsin gave us a pretty good
run for our money.
This was the Red Scare.
I have in my hand a list of 38
people working in the State
Department who were known
members of the Communist party,
 utter fiction.
And yet Joe
McCarthy met his match in
the most unlikely of
circumstances.
He really wanted to stick
it to Joseph Welch, who was the
senior lawyer from Hale and
Dorr who was representing the
Army in those hearings.
And Welch had a very young man
named Fred Fisher, who's a
junior associate at Hale and
Dorr.
He's then in my future law firm
sitting there.
And McCarthy says, "This young
man here is a member
of the Communist Party."
And Fred Fisher says, "What?"
And Joseph Welch says, there's
a slight pause and he says,
"Have you at last, sir, no 
sense of decency."
And that went plunk, plunk,
plunk into the
consciousness of
the American people
and McCarthy was destroyed.
And we can certainly hope
when we have a person running
for president this year who
says, my role model is Roy Cohn,
who would
always say when a rotten
situation in the New York
housing market came up, and what
are we going to do? He would...
Roy Cohn would always say,
"Don't tell me what the law is.
Tell me who the judge is."
And my sense is
that that person is
de granulating really
almost disintegrating as we
speak. My hope is that the
two cases brought by Jack Smith
in the public integrity section
of the Criminal Division, which
is my old stomping grounds.
Even if they don't get
tried before the election, at
least if the allegations become
widely studied,
it's not even going to be
close.
>> Timothy Naftali:
We have another great panel
to come, but I'd like to end...
to give the last word to
John Doar.
He was kind enough, thanks to
Maureen Barden to do an
interview for the library.
"What happened was, in good
part, luck.
And the luck was that I had
this group of lawyers working
for me that I could depend
upon, and that were loyal and
smart and didn't have any
axes to grind and didn't have
any ambitions to fulfill."
On behalf of those who are
watching, thank you for your
public service.
Thank you for your attention.
And panel two is next.
[Applause]