Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (2/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (2/2)
[01.31.41] Mr. DENNIS. Would the gentleman yield? Mr. HUNGATE. I will yield to my distinguished and learned colleague from Indiana. Mr. DENNIS. I would just like to say to my good friend from Missouri that I really intended no criticism of President Truman who happens to be a gentleman that I admire myself, and if he did check into Drew Pearson, I would come close to thinking that that might almost have been justified. Mr. HUNGATE. I thank the gentleman for his comment and I know that as a distinguished trial attorney he would do nothing except what is proper. We have talked about people, and agents. and servants and employees and I would like to in just, my brief time talk some about Mr. Butterfield's testimony. I thought he was good. He was one of our better witnesses. He has not been indicted. Now, he said in some of his testimony,. after qualifying how much time he spent In the White House from his first day and that is as early as you can get sworn in and he is right up there next to the Oval Office and goes through some of this, then he. talks about Mr. Haldeman: "Now, -Mr. Haldeman, in addition to being the Chief of the White House Staff was in charge of everything other than the domestic international trade, congressional and national security. He was in charge of everything that had a personal connotation, the speech writing the appointments, the President's travel schedule, the liaison with outside groups, political matters by and large, Personal matters, communications with the media, et cetera." And then he says "I could go on now and elaborate a bit on the Haldeman staff. That is the staff I know best. That is the staff which was the biggest and had most of the people on it. But if a crunch matter came up, of course, they checked with Haldeman. Larry Higby was Bob Haldeman's alter ego. Larry Higby was to Haldeman what Haldeman was to the President." Then he goes on about Higby and Gordon Strachan and his responsibilities, He says that "he was responsible for keeping attuned to the political happenings around the country, and had a very close liaison to the Committee to Re-Elect." Then continuing in our testimony on page 29, he testifies: [quoting transcript] The President, first of all, is well organized always and highly disciplined as an individual. The whole staff reflected that. The staff was a very, very well organized, firmly run staff. Mr. DOAR. Could you give to the committee an indication of the President's work habits with respect to attention to detail? As you knew it? Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Yes; from my observations, from my having seen thousands and thousands of memoranda over this period of time--I May be using these figures loosely-- hundreds and hundreds of memoranda over this period of time, from working directly with the President and Haldeman, I know him to be a detail man. Then he goes on The President often, of course, was concerned whether or not the Curtains Were closed or open, the arrangement of state gifts, whether they should be on that side of the room or this side of the room, displayed on a weekly basis or a monthly or daily basis. Social functions were always reviewed by him, the scenario, after they came to me from Mrs. Nixon. Each was always interested in the table, arrangements. He debated whether we should have a U-shaped table or round table. He was deeply involved in the entertainment business, whom we should get for what kind of a group, small band, big band, black band, white band, jazz band, Whatever. He was very interested in meals and bow they were served and the time of the waiters and was usually put out if a State dinner was not taken care Of in less than an hour or an hour's time. He debated receiving lines and whether or not he should have a line prior to the entertainment for those relatively junior people in the administration who were invited to the entertainment portion of the dinners only and not to the main dinner. [end quoted section] The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. Mr. SEIBERLING. Mr. Chairman ? Mr. Chairman? The CHAIRMAN. Did Mr. Dennis seek recognition? Mr. DENNIS. Mr. Chairman, I will Seek recognition, sure. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dennis Mr. DENNIS. Mr. Chairman, and my colleagues on the committee, think this article, if proof were here, would be more important in many respects than article I that, we dealt with earlier. But, the difficulty as I see, it is that whereas on article I you had a, difficult matter of balancing Proof mid deciding where the weight lay and whether a case had been made beyond a, reasonable type of a doubt. and I decided it had not been, but while you have that kind of a problem there, here we might have a serious case, if you had the evidence, you don't really have the evidence. And I cannot believe that we are going to impeach the President of the United States, without------ [01.36.03--TAPE OUT]