Arthur Liman's Past
Teti, Dennis
ARTHUR LIMAN'S PAST by Dennis Teti As a senior at Harvard, Arthur Liman wrote a thesis supervised by Samuel P. Huntington (currently President of the American Political Science Association) on the...
...of Oliver North, the undermining of the Reagan foreign agenda, and perhaps the destruction of Reagan's presidency...
...Brendan Sullivan's refusal to have his client Oliver North undergo the private ordeal showed that he understood what Liman had learned from the anti-subversive hearings of the 1950s: In putting the spotlight on subversives in these areas, the New Investigation has made great use of the preliminary closed session...
...As Liman explained decades ago: [Congressional] investigation- has always been a tool of partisan politics, and has been used with equal avidity by all factions when the opportunity presented itself...
...subversive] by the committee will have to undergo public testimony...
...Whether the New Investigation will jeopardize the independence of the executive, and destroy the separation of powers thus seems to depend on whether the Presidency will mobilize all the forces at its disposal to resist it...
...North and Admiral Poindexter, refused to testify to the select committees on self-incrimination grounds...
...The Iran committees' method of choice was to interrogate witnesses for long hours behind closed doors, dismiss those who did not help their case against Ronald Reagan, and use their own testimony in public against those who spoke for the Administration...
...Senate Counsel Liman argued the same precedent for executive privilege in 1954: The other important way of checking aggrandizing congressional committees is for the President to refuse them access to information on the grounds that disclosure would be detrimental to public interest...
...North referred to a 1936 Supreme Court case, United States v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., in which the Court favorably cited George Washington's withholding of certain documents from Congress...
...Investigations have always been utilized to defame or to defend some person or some cause...
...The preliminary closed hearing was used in order to separate the good from the bad for public display...
...He believed that by presenting their testimony in cumulative fashion, he could build a case against the Administration's faulty foreign policy "process" which would demonstrate that there was a conspiratorial "government within Reagan's government," ending in the exposure...
...A few samples: 'Because of Independent Counsel Walsh's investigation, two target figures, Lt...
...The opinions expressed in this article are his own...
...Dennis Teti was a staff member of the select committees investigating the Iran-contra events...
...Liman's interest in congressional investigations from the time of his college thesis suggests that he was long preparing to lead a "new investigation" of his own...
...An essential part of Liman's plan for the hearings was to parade the witnesses before the television screens in very specific order...
...The Founding Fathers were much too fearful of legislative tyranny not to anticipate situations like this...
...Witnesses are weeded out so that only those considered subservice [sic, i.e...
...North justified his actions, partaking of executive authority, on a broad reading of the President's constitutional power over foreign policy and the privilege of withholding information from Congress...
...ARTHUR LIMAN'S PAST by Dennis Teti As a senior at Harvard, Arthur Liman wrote a thesis supervised by Samuel P. Huntington (currently President of the American Political Science Association) on the threat to limited government from what he termed the "New Investigation...
...In 1954 Liman understood perfectly well how such public testimony might undermine the right to a fair trial: [T]he Kefauver Committee exposed individuals while they were undergoing investigation by a grand jury...
...His careful study of the behavior of the Nye, Kefauver, McCarthy, and other investigative committees shows that the Iran-contra hearings, conducted under Liman's direction, were not the first to utilize certain forensic techniques...
...Over thirty years ago Liman recognized the value of television as an ally of Congress in the struggle against the executive branch: Television has become a great asset of the congressional committee...
...It is difficult to see how this new media [sic] can be utilized as effectively by the Presidency as it has been by the Congress...
...Were these committees created to find facts or attack Republicans...
...How individuals who have been pilloried by congressional investigating committees can be guaranteed a fair trial before an unprejudiced jury is hard to see, unless the jury be illiterate...
...President Washington set the precedent for such a refusal in 1796 by declining to lay before the House of Representatives papers relating to the negotiations for a treaty with England...
...Liman saw clearly, in 1954, that the President is duty-bound to fight against investigations designed to destroy the executive: If the investigative power of Congress is unlimited, the separation of powers, and system of checks and balances must break down...
...The committees first delayed action in order to give the Independent Counsel maximum time to gather evidence, then forced North and Poindexter to testify by giving them limited "use immunity...
...Such refusals are in the shadowland of constitutional law because of the lack of delineation between the powers of Congress and the Presidency...
...It will be the ambition of the Presidency alone that will protect the independence of his branch from unwarranted interference by the New Investigation...
...Even Cabinet meetings do not have the dramatic qualities of a well-planned congressional hearing [my emphasis...
Vol. 20 • October 1987 • No. 10
