Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 26, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 26, 1974 (1/2)
[00.09.28] Mr. WIGGINS. Now, we can be suspicious but those suspicions have not provoked any grand Jury -who has investigated this, has not provoked Judge Sirica has not Provoked anybody else to return criminal indictments because they don't know. Let's recognize that that gap is a suspicious circumstance to me but this is not evidence We have the situation of the President being less than candid according to Mr. Sarbanes in saying that was no White House involvement on June 20, 1972. But let me tell you what John Dean said, He said he talked to Liddy on that day and you know what Liddy told him?, Liddy first--the statement was made by Dean as follows: First, Gordon, he said, "I -want to know whether anybody in the White House was involved in this," and Liddy, the architect of all replied, "No ; they were not." And that, continued to be the state of the President's knowledge thereafter. If that is the kind of quality of evidence, this evidence upon which this plot hatched this policy, let me say that it is ambiguous. It is confusing. might be susceptible of different interpretations but we know what. the law is. You can't do it on that basis. If there is a benign interpretation pointing toward innocence 'we must take it. We must take it. Well, let me say that first essential charge that the President made in his policy is not supported by the evidence. The, CHAIRMAN. The time. of the gentleman from Mississippi has expired. Mr. FROEHLICH. AM r. Chairman? The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Chairman, I yield to 'the, gentleman from Massachusetts , Father Drinan. Mr. DRINAN. Thank you, very much for yielding. It seems to me those who have challenged the wording here! Have to turn up with another policy. The wording here in the Sarbanes substitute is very clear. We are not saying that Mr. Nixon invented this policy. He made it his policy to carry out the obstruction of justice It, seems to me that that is the only possible conclusion that one, could come. to you look at the vast amount of evidence following the incident at the Democratic National Committee. If this is another explanation it has not turned up in all of our investigations. It seems to me the situation is unique for or many reasons and the principle one is this, that the President has withheld the evidence. In 69 cases of possible impeachment in all our history only on(-, individual has ever sought to withhold evidence from an impeachment inquiry and that Person invoked the fifth amendment. What are, the alternatives to that careful wording, "The President made it his policy?" Can you say that all these things are mere chance'? There is absolutely no coherent explanation. You can take that but lawyers resist that. There has to be some explanation of all of the tragic events that took place out and inside the Oval Office. Can we say that the President knew nothing about what Haldeman and Ehrlichman were doing, that they themselves conspired alone? That, is contrary to all of the, evidence. I Say therefore that we have to name some policy that the President had and this substitute we say he made it his policy to obstruct justice. I would love to find another policy. I have searched for 6 months with the other lawyers here for another policy but I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the President made it his policy to impede the investigation of the burglary in the Democratic National Committee. I yield back to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California, Mr. Waldie. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California is recognized. Mr. WALDIE. Mr. Chairman, I too want to address myself to the question of the President's policy. Understand, we are dealing with policy that will not bear the scrutiny of light. It is an action and a plan and a policy of the White House and people in the highest level of Government in the United States and it simply will not bear scrutiny. They cannot stand to have anybody examine this policy. So therefore to demand that we, provide a parchment scroll of a Presidential declaration that on such and such an hour of such and such a day a policy ,Was established by the White House to engage in a coverup of illicit ..'activities is really- quite unrealistic and is not really advanced I think with the objective and the desire to really get at the truth. But a policy "Of this nature a, policy of this nature, is a surreptitious covert Policy that evolves. Its parameters and it's limits are not known at its inception. The policy is we have got to cover up. We simply cannot let the ..People of America know that we have financed political intelligence .activities that have resulted in the burglary of the, Democratic' National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel because once they find that out, they will find out that whole litany of covert activities authorized and financed by the White House, by Hint and Liddy, "the principals of the Watergate burglary, the "plumbers," that whole "litany of illegal covert activities described by John Mitchell as the "horrors of the White House." It is the policy, is clear. You can't permit the American people to discover that because you are in a national election year. The policy is to protect the election of the President. It is Implicit. Nobody denies it. The policy is to protect the election of the President by immediately taking actions to cover up the entry and the participation and authorization and part of that entry illegal and surreptitious into the Watergate Hotel by the White House and by the Committee To Re-Elect the President. And it didn't start late in the period after the entry. It started immediately. Howard Hunt, one of the burglars, and Gordon Liddy, another of the burglars, who were not picked up the night of the 17th--five were picked up, they were not they were across the street in *the electronics gear room-- immediately went back to the White House and picked tip $10,000 in cash that had been paid by Gordon Liddy from campaign funds of the Committee too To Re-Elect the President for emergencies such as this, and he gave that $10,000 cash early the morning of the burglary to an attorney to defend those, burglars. The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Pennsylvania has expired.