Nixon's Case against Nixon

...If the attempt at obstruction had succeeded, the entire series of Watergate-related scandals might have been swept under the rug...

...True, they lack the stark impact of murder or bank robbery, but they are many times more serious and are many times more threatening to the nation...

...In this area, I felt it was important to avoid disclosure of the details of the national security matters with which the group was concerned...

...Such an effort, when directed from the nation's highest office, constitutes a frontal attack on the essence of the American experiment...

...On the contrary, the decision, as well as the concurring opinions by Justices William O. Douglas and Byron White, flatly denies the President's claim...

...There is every evidence indeed that the President has lost not merely those persons like Mills he needed to have but even some others that he should be able to take for granted...

...It recommended that "present restrictions on covert coverage should be relaxed on selected targets of . . . internal security interest...

...However, because of the emphasis I put on the crucial importance of protecting the national security, I can understand how highly motivated individuals could have felt justified in engaging in specific activities that I would have disapproved had they been brought to my attention...

...This is an open-and-shut case of deliberate obstruction of a criminal investigation, punishable under Federal law by up to five years' imprisonment and a $5,000 fine, and clearly an impeachable high crime...

...it is positively zany to claim that information given to the likes of Hunt and the Watergate burglars—most of whom didn't even have security clearances^—would be compromised by allowing the FBI access to it...

...He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures...

...Covert coverage" refers to opening of first class mail without a search warrant, which is punishable by $100 fine and one year imprisonment for each piece of mail opened...

...He has just about persuaded a U.S...

...I appointed Director Hoover as chairman of an interagency committee to prepare recommendations...

...A final argument in the President's behalf is that the offenses to which he has confessed, while technically impeachable, are not sufficiently serious to warrant impeachment...

...MURRAY KEMPTON (Mr...

...I believe a substantial majority of my colleagues will come to the same view, if they have not already done so...

...Ford is an honest man, but he is also an American Vice President...

...It is not credible to claim the FBI cannot be trusted with national security information...

...Now, Wilbur Mills, who was supposed to be a refuge, has turned out to be a judge so inimical to the defendant that he will commit the atrocity of announcing the verdict before the evidence is in...

...House...

...The Presidential oath of office—the only oath specified in the Constitution—includes the pledge to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States...

...So we have a President who approved burglary and mail violation...

...I. Obstruction of Criminal Investigation...

...Examination of this decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Government did not have the right to conduct domestic security wiretaps without prior court order, reveals no support for the President's claim that it "indicates inherent power in the Presidency" to violate the law in the name of national security...

...So even if national security organizations had the power to set themselves above the law, which they do not, the Plumbers were disqualified because of their lack of legal authority, their private partisan funding, and their partisan behavior...

...They were not a legitimate national security agency in terms of: (1) their charter—they had no Congressional authorization as a national security or police agency, and the President has no power to grant such authority on his own...

...he has lied to Congress about bombing Cambodia in 1970, and he bombed it illegally in 1973...

...NIXON'S ACHIEVEMENT Mr...

...Indeed, Nixon could understand how Egil Krogh could have felt justified in burglary: The President had specifically authorized it a year earlier for just this type of situation...

...Representative Mills is, of course, a judge in this case, having been selected by Mr...

...I am not suggesting the House Judiciary Committee should drop its impeachment investigation and bring an impeachment resolution to the floor immediately...

...If the tapes and other evidence show that the President, in discussing the possibility of paying a million dollars in hush money, did not reject the proposal on moral or legal grounds, what remains of his ability to govern will be destroyed immediately and completely...

...He believes that the House is moving inevitably toward finding a Bill of Impeachment against the President and he is emitting desperate signals to Mr...

...Fully aware he was ordering the performance of illegal acts, Nixon approved the Huston plan, and on July 15 Huston informed the directors of the various intelligence agencies that "restrictions on covert coverage are to be relaxed . . . Restraints on the use of surreptitious entry are to be removed...

...to impeachment himself, if he suffers [his subordinates] to perpetrate with impunity high crimes or misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses...

...Neither is the testimony of John Dean...

...We can measure the change Mr...

...Ehrlich-man to ensure that the investigation of the break-in not expose . . . the activities of the White House Investigations Unit...

...Fortunately, we had an FBI director who did not...

...further, suppose we somehow reject James Madison's claim that the President is "subject...

...But this investigation is necessary only in the senses that justice must be served and that the American people have a right to the whole truth...

...Nixon has wrought in his own prospects by noticing what is being said about him by Congressmen who are by nature so committed to the avoidance of fuss that they might put up with a President who was a mafioso and kept a lime pit behind the White House so long as he was discreet about it...

...So we have a confession from President Nixon that he ordered breaking and entering...

...Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist: This operation against this target, conducted in 1971, matches to perfection the operations and targets discussed by Huston in his various memoranda...

...The White House Counsel's office has informed me that the decision or opinion in question was a 1972 case, U. S. v. U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan...

...and, if there is one rock in our tradition, it is the degrading duty it places upon a Vice President never to suggest that he would act otherwise than as the President acted...

...Thus, according to Nixon, he knew shortly after the burglary that E. Howard Hunt was a member of the Plumbers, that Hunt was involved in the Watergate burglary, and that the Plumbers were, therefore, prime targets for the FBI investigation...

...the soundness of his judgment has been confirmed by the fact that, although the plan was never implemented, we have suffered no perceptible loss of internal security...

...Without the tapes, without further testimony or investigation, we have even stronger evidence against Nixon than the Justice Department had against Spiro Agnew: I believe Nixon has publicly confessed to at least one impeachable high crime and at least one impeachable high misdemeanor...

...For a Chief Executive, on the basis of self-conferred "inherent power" to violate the law, to attempt to establish one secret police force, actually to establish a second, and to seek to obstruct the lawful investigation of its illegality, are crimes against the American people which make murder and robbery seem almost trivial...

...Resort to appropriate warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches...

...The options . . . approved had included . . . authorization for surreptitious entry—breaking and entering, in effect— on specified categories of targets in specified situations related to national security...

...The President has produced no written record of cancellation to support his position...

...We discussed the urgent need for better intelligence operations...

...Violation of United States Constitution and of Oath of Office...

...Nixon's is not a Presidency which offers much present hope of shining in our history...

...It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed...

...But the evidence of the tapes is not necessary for his impeachment...

...It seems clear to me that a President is impeachable for violation of the Constitution and of his oath of office, and that arguments to the contrary are transparently untenable...

...Approval of the Huston plan, like obstruction of the FBI investigation of the Plumbers, constitutes an open-and-shut case for impeachment in which the facts, the law, and the intent are beyond question...

...It is not necessary to the decision of whether Nixon should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office...

...Previously he was a practicing attorney and a member of the California legislature...

...But the Plumbers had no legitimate claim to special treatment...

...2) their funding—on at least one occasion (the Ellsberg psychiatrist's break-in), the Plumbers operated not on government funds, but on Republican campaign money, and illegal milk money at that, and (3) their behavior—on at least one occasion (Hunt's forgery of cables designed to implicate President Kennedy in the Diem assassination), the Plumbers attempted falsely to discredit the Government of the United States and a former President of the United States...

...In the words of the majority opinion by Justice Lewis Powell, "The freedoms of the Fourth Amendment cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances are conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch without the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate...

...H. R. Haldeman, John Ehr-lichman, and Dean attempted to carry out the President's instructions by persuading FBI Director L. Patrick Gray that the investigation should be dropped...

...The President has submitted an income tax return including a fraudulently backdated deed which saved him nearly a quarter of a million dollars...

...Mills's entire history suggests only one reason why he should depart so crashingly from both his habitual decorum and his normal decency...

...In the course of his May 22 confession, he sought to justify his high crime by saying, "I was concerned that the Watergate activity might well lead to an inquiry into the activities of the Special Investigations Unit itself...

...It was Huston who drafted a proposal based on the majority recommendations of the interagency committee and submitted it for Nixon's approval...

...Congress to do something it absolutely did not want to do...

...Even if we thus strain credibility beyond all reason, the hard fact remains that President Nixon ordered his subordinates to go out and violate the law...

...On June 25, the committee submitted a report which included specific options for expanded intelligence operations, and on July 23 the agencies were notified by memorandum of the options approved...

...But even if he is correct he is not vindicated...

...And yet, he seems, by his own efforts, to have come close to achieving what Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt repeatedly failed to accomplish...

...After reconsideration, however, prompted by the opposition of J. Edgar Hoover, the agencies were notified five days later, on July 28, that the approval had been rescinded...

...There was no overriding internal security crisis...

...To his credit, J. Edgar Hoover flatly refused to participate in the plan on the grounds that it was both illegal and unnecessary...

...I instructed Mr...

...he has raised milk price supports under highly suspicious conditions, and his role in the payment of hush money to the Watergate conspirators is even more suspicious...

...Moreover, we must remember that the investigation Nixon attempted to obstruct was being conducted not by the newspapers but by the FBI...

...He suggested that "present restrictions should be modified to permit selective use of this technique against . . . urgent security targets...

...They claimed that vital, secret CIA operations in Mexico would be compromised if the FBI investigated the "Mexican laundry" through which funds had passed on their way from the Committee to Re-elect the President to the Watergate burglars...

...Haldeman and Mr...

...I continue to be amazed that a President would represent a Supreme Court decision as saying one thing when it so clearly says the opposite...

...Krogh had no reason in 1971 to believe the President had changed his mind, and we have no reason to believe so today...

...It is desirable that these and all other accusations be investigated thoroughly to determine whether they provide grounds for impeachment...

...Thus, by his very approval of the Huston plan, Nixon committed an impeachable high misdemeanor...

...Again, he laid it on the line for the President to make the decision: "Use of this technique is clearly illegal: it amounts to burglary...

...The Constitution unequivocally instructs the President to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed...

...Nixon's Case against Nixon ROBERT L. LEGGETT Since the release of the recent Watergate indictments, public attention has focused on the Grand Jury's sealed report to Judge John Sirica, which is now in the hands of the House Judiciary Committee, on the tapes to which the Grand Jury has listened, and on the apparent contradiction between two of President Nixon's statements concerning his awareness of "hush money" paid to the Watergate conspirators...

...Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, has predicted that the Congressional report on the President's delinquencies as a taxpayer would be damaging enough to force him to resign...

...Next, Huston proposed what he referred to as "surreptitious entry...

...In the course of his August 22, 1973 press conference, immediately after conceding that a violation of oath of office was impeachable, he said, "I would . . . refer you to the recent decision of the Supreme Court or at least an opinion that even last year which indicates inherent power in the Presidency to protect the national security in cases like this...

...On February 5 I wrote to President Nixon and asked for the specific quotation from the decision or opinion which supports his position...

...He has already given us the evidence to decide that...

...But I do say such a move would, on the basis of the facts and the law, now lead to impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate...

...Nixon claims he withdrew his approval completely and permanently...

...But instead of allowing this investigation to proceed, Nixon by his own admission attempted to kill it...

...Huston disagrees, contending in public statements that the plan was never officially canceled...

...If there is one single element that dominates the Constitution of the United States and the debates that produced it, it is the insistence that the powers of the Government over the people be strictly limited to those specified by law...

...I knew that once the existence of the group became known, it would lead inexorably to a discussion of these matters, some of which remain, even today, highly sensitive...

...It is therefore significant that FBI Director Hoover rejected the Huston plan as not only illegal but also unnecessary...

...Nixon to depart while the smallest means of grace remain to him...

...Kempton is a regular commentator on "Spectrum," a radio production of CBS News...

...Vice President Ford says that if his subordinates had told him that they were engaged in an effort to obstruct a criminal prosecution, he thinks that he would have turned over any such information to the Attorney General...

...Both offenses involve willful attempts to impose a secret police system upon the people of the United States...

...But this argument cannot defend approval of the Huston plan...

...On May 22, 1973, President Nixon issued a statement which read in part, "Within a few days [after the Watergate burglary] . . . the name of Mr...

...That President Nixon decided instead to go outside the law suggests he felt he could not convince Congress of the need for this legislation...

...Of all the agencies participating in the creation of the Huston plan, only the FBI has a legitimate internal security mission, and only the FBI had extensive experience in internal security matters...

...Discussing the Ellsberg burglary on May 22, Nixon said, "I did impress upon Mr...

...It can reasonably be argued that there are circumstances in which extreme and immediate danger to the national security justifies actions which otherwise would be violations of the law...

...The proposal, highly classified at the time, was published in the course of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings...

...In any case, his action was illegal and in no way justifiable by the circumstances...

...Krogh the vital importance to the national security of his assignment...

...But suppose we assume Nixon did in fact disapprove of burglary in 1971, and that his aides, Ehrlichman, Krogh, and David R. Young, somehow did not associate their planned burglary with Nixon's views on Hustonian burglary...

...The obstruction failed when the CIA refused to cooperate, pointing out it had no operations in Mexico that could be endangered...

...Huston made certain Nixon was aware of the lawlessness of the proposal, explicitly stating that "covert coverage is illegal and there are serious risks involved...

...he has raised the subject of an attractive position in the Government with a judge who was at the time hearing a case in which Nixon was vitally interested...

...There is strong evidence that the Huston plan submerged in July 1970 only to reappear a year later, with the Plumbers replacing the FBI as its striking arm...

...Since there can be no dispute of the facts, the intent, or the law, Nixon pleads the extenuating circumstance of overriding national security considerations...

...Nixon, who, as always the cunning craftsman of his own scaffold, preferred that a Joint Congressional Committee investigate his tax returns rather than the Internal Revenue Service...

...Nixon is not quite alone yet, but even his Vice President is packing his bags...

...Hunt had surfaced in connection with Watergate, and I was alerted to the fact that he had previously been a member of the Special Investigations Unit [the "Plumbers"] in the White Robert L. Leggett, California Democrat, has served in the House of Representatives since 1962...

...His personal representative on the interagency committee was a member of the White House staff, Tom Charles Huston, who—together with the Orange County conservatives and former Joe McCarthy enthusiasts who were running the White House—was convinced that dissident individuals and groups were major threats to national security...

...As with the obstruction of justice charge, Nixon's only defense can be that of extenuating circumstances...

...I did not authorize and had no knowledge of any illegal means to be used to achieve this goal...

...Consider the Plumbers' burglary of the office of Dr...

...Let us turn once again to President Nixon's May 22 statement: "On June 5, 1970, I met with the Director of the FBI, the Director of the CIA, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Director of the National Security Agency...

...He is going to force it to impeach him...

...Nixon has asserted he has "inherent powers" to conduct burglary without court order...

...Moreover, even if there had been an internal security crisis, there was no reason why the Administration could not have sought legislation providing for burglary on court order in domestic security cases...

...I have received no answer...

...Implementation of the proposal was therefore suspended—not because Nixon shared Hoover's scruples, which he did not, but because the plan as formulated could not be carried out without Hoover's active cooperation, since it was the FBI that was to do the actual spying...