Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 27, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 27, 1974 (1/2)
[00.30.54] Mr. DENNIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the parliamentary scenario we see today whereby all those who were against specificity yesterday want to recite it today, albeit not put it in the charges, is kind of interesting, but, aside -from that it is sort of refreshing to talk a little bit about the facts. I listened carefully to my good friend from Maine , Mr. Cohen, and he says, for instance, by June 19, Ehrlichman had learned that Liddy -was involved. Did Ehrlichman tell the. President he had learned it? There is no evidence he ever did. Did Liddy tell the President? Certainly not. The gentleman says Mitchell had learned something. Did Mitchell tell the President what he had learned? No evidence of it whatsoever at that time. You do not get anything involving the President in the gentleman's recital until pretty far down the line. Now, the first thing you get about the President is the statement that he made on a dictabelt that McCord said he was sorry he, had not disciplined his men better. Is that news? McCord was one of his men and McCord was in jail. Mr. COHEN. Will the gentleman----- Mr. DENNIS. No; I will not yield. Mr. COHEN. Mr. Mitchell. Mr. DENNIS. Mr. Mitchell Mr'. COHEN. Mr. Mitchell. Mr. DENNIS. Mitchell--McCord was Mitchell's man. Mitchell knew McCord was arrested. He did not have to reveal anything that was not in the newspapers. And he said he was sorry he had not disiplined the people. For all we know, he may have been talking about McCord. There is no significance to that at all. Now. you talk about Dean. You talk about Kalmbach. You talk. about Mitchell. You talk about Ehrlichman. Where do you get the, President? Let me ask you a question. Who had a motive, to cover anything up when this happened? There is not any evidence at all that the President, knew anything about this Watergate break-in ahead of time. I think we are all pretty well agree on that. Now, it happened, Who has a motive to cover it up? The worst, thing that can happen to the President is to lose an election which by that time he, knew he could not lose no matter what he did because you gentlemen Over there were going to hand it to him by McGovern being obviously the successful candidate by that time. So he did not need to worry about that. But Ehrlichman had something to worry about because he was in- involved in the Plumbers and he was involved in the Fielding break-in, and he knew if you started to look into Watergate break-in you found out that. these boys had been in the Plumbers and that they had been out in California, were likely to get back to him. Mitchell had something to worry about because he had known about the surveillance plans for the, Democratic Committee and according to some of the evidence, had OK'd it ahead of time.. Haldeman did not have quite as much, but he, too, had something to", worry about because he had had these political reports and he had $350,000 there to play with. And he had some things to be concerned, about. But at that point the President really has nothing. So should he be bothered to cover up? All right. You go down the line a little bit further. The President learns nothing until March 21 or maybe a little bit on March 13. Now, it says he is talking to Petersen and he does not tell him what he learned on March 21. Well, from April 6 on, the President and Petersen both knew that Dean is, singing like a canary to the U.S. attorney. This was understood between them, that he was the state's evidence. They were talking back and forth. Petersen says don't fire him yet because I need this fellow. I may want to give him immunity. And so on and so forth. So there, was not any need for the President to tell Petersen anything about what Dean was saying. At that time, the U.S. attorney was getting everything Dean was saying. If you start talking about the facts, if you start pleading the facts, you cannot, hold any--very much intendment against the President except by taking the worst possible construction on everything that happens, when the law is that he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, And that is probably one of the reasons why we have not had specificity, and remember, by April 30, all these wrongdoers are cleaned out of the White House gone. and they have been prosecuted and they are in jail, some of them. and everybody goes up to the Senate and testifies, and so forth and so on. and I am real glad to begin to see, even if we cannot have it put in the, charge like any decent charge would, what we are going to be talking about on this on the floor and on down the line, and in the Senate if You ever get it there, because the more you analyze it. the more you are going to find out, how weak this case is on the facts. [00.36.15]