Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 12, 1973 (1/2)
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 12, 1973 (1/2)
[00.17.14--committee room] Senator ERVIN. Mr. Sanders. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Stans, this committee has received testimony from several witnesses and from you today concerning the Budget Committee of the Finance Committee To' Re-Elect the President; that, is, that it was composed of three members from the finance committee and three members from the Committee To Re-Elect the President and I would like to take just a, few minutes to explore some aspects of that committee with you. To begin with, it's been asked of you -who your superiors were. No mention in your answer was made of Mr. Mitchell. Did you consider in any way that you had any line responsibility to him, you being chairman of the finance committee and him as chairman of the Committee To Re-Elect the President? Mr. STANS. No, I did not really consider that I was subordinate to Mr. Mitchell. We were separate committees, each performing our mission, and we communicated from time to time and our principal means of discussion about what we had to do to accomplish our mission was in the budget committee meetings. Mr. SANDERS. Who designated you to be a member of the budget committee? Mr. STANS. Mr. Mitchell and I worked that out Jointly, that there would be three members from each committee. Mr. SANDERS. The budget, committee then was not, in being at the time you became chairman of the. finance committee? Mr. STANS. No, sir, and Mr. Mitchell was not, there, either, at that time. Mr. SANDERS. When did the budget committee actually begin to function? Do you recall? Mr. STANS. I do not recall precisely but I think our first meetings were in April. They were irregular, they were not on schedule, they were meeting-, as material came to hand or questions arose and in those days we were trying first to get an overall budget put together on which we could agree, and secondly, we were trying to get budgets from each of the 50 States; as to how much would be spent in each State. Mr. SANDERS. Would you please state the membership of the budget committee at the time. it was constituted? [00.19.47] Mr. STANS. There was John Mitchell, Job Magruder and, I believe, Bart Porter on the Campaign committee side. There was myself , Hugh Sloan, Jr., and Lee Nunn on the finance committee side. but in addition to the three from each side, meetings were attended by two or three. other people from each committee so they were a little larger than six-man meetings. Mr. SANDERS. Did you customarily chair the budget committee meetings? Mr. STANS. No, we were, cochairmen but I deferred generally to Mr. Mitchell and I think he, chaired more often than I did. Mr. SANDERS. Who prepared the agenda for the meetings, or Were they less formal than that? Mr. STANS. Well, for the, first, number of months they were very informal, there, were no agendas We began to have agendas after the convention when we began to deal with the very large amounts of money currently being spent. Mr. SANDERS. To your knowledge, did the budget, committee ever give consideration to the Collection of cash contributions and retention of that in a repository within the premises of the finance committee? Mr. STANS. The budget committee did not, deal with contributions. The budget committee dealt, exclusively with the expenditures of the campaign. Specifically it did not, separately deal with cash transactions. Mr. SANDERS. Realizing that the budget committee may not have considered the receipt of cash contributions, nevertheless did it ever consider the potential use, of cash as opposed to the, Use Of funds in bank accounts? Mr. STANS. No, there was no distinction between cash and bank accounts in any discussions in the budget committee Mr. SANDERS. Now, there were large sums of money, we have, been hearing expended for -Mr. Liddy, Mr. Porter, and some Others. To your knowledge, and I presume you either attended all of the budget committee meetings or were informed what had transpired there if you were not able to attend, to your knowledge, did the budget committee ever take under consideration the allocation of any cash funds to Mr. Liddy or to Mr. Porter? Mr. STANS. No. The budget committee did not specifically deal with any allocation of cash funds to any individuals, Porter, Liddy, or anyone else. Mr. SANDERS. To your knowledge, did the budget committee ever take under consideration the allocation of funds to be expended for any intelligence-gathering operation? Mr. STANS. I do not recall ever hearing any discussion of intelligence-gathering in the budget committee meetings. [00.23.23]