Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 12, 1973
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 12, 1973
[00.26.03] Now, as to chairman and treasurer. These are the only two statutory offices required of a political committee. As chairman of the committee I had a personal responsibility for overall coordination of its activities. The principal vehicle in this respect, was a daily staff meeting attended by the treasurer, the controller, the general counsel, and several vice chairmen working in Washington, But without doubt my prime personal responsibility was to raise the money required to finance the campaign, and that occupied almost all of my time and attention. Between February 15 and November 7, 1972, I visited approximately 45 cities in 32 States to meet with fundraising committees, groups of potential contributors, and individual potential contributors. I also met with individuals and groups in Washington and made many hundreds of phone calls to fundraisers and contributors. And this was no not a campaign financed by a few large contributors. To insure participation by hundreds of thousands Of individuals, I directed a direct-mail program that reached 30 million homes and a group fundraising plan to reach people at, their places of employment. These took a great deal of time. As chairman of the committee I had no responsibility in connection with the internal handling of funds, banking, recording accounting and reporting. I did not sign checks. I did not expend cash from the treasurer's cash fund. I did not, have a cash fund. It was my regular practice when I accepted contributions for the committee, to turn them over to the treasurer promptly. I did not have relationships With the banks. And I did not make entries in the books or even see, the books. I did -not prepare the public reports, and did not review them except to scan the summary pages. These, were all the responsibility of the treasurer. That, was not only within the working format, of our committee, but, was provided under the Federal Election Campaign Act, His was the, responsibility for all day-to-day to-day internal operations, and generally I consulted with him only when he came to me for guidance on a specific problem, which Was On a limited number of occasions. Now, as to before pre-February 15 and after February 15. When I joined the committee on February 15, last year, a, considerable number of activities were underway and a number of people were in place. Fundraising and campaign activities had been engaged in for almost a year. Programs had been planned or committed by the campaign people, funds had been collected and disbursed, committees had been formed and terminated, and some well-publicized transactions already occurred. Patterns of payment to Herbert, Porter and Gordon Liddy were a practice. Magruder had blanket, authority to direct payments. Kalmbach had turned over to the committee the funds in his possession. But no steps had been taken to comply with the new law, and the procedures generally were inadequate to cope with the volume of work sure to come. When I joined the committee the bank balance was about $3 million, and there was still $30 million or $40 million or more to be raised. I did not review what had happened before but began to work with the problem at hand. I did not learn about many of the earlier transactions until a much later time. For example, from February 15 to April 7, I had 45 working days, counting Saturdays, and 13 days were spent outside Washington'. It, was not, a period in which I could spend time on detail. I trusted the people already in the committee organization, and I relied heavily on the treasurer because of his previous experience in 1968 and 1971, and, even before. 1968. I was after contributions. [00.30.36]