The Wars of Watergate (95 page)

By March 1974 Doar had hired a staff that numbered more than 100 persons, almost half of them lawyers. The staff, Democrats and Republicans alike, had no views on impeachment when hired—at least for the record. Forty-three lawyers worked on impeachment matters; eighteen were from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia; and only four came from law schools west of the Mississippi—statistics that undoubtedly reinforced the President’s hostility toward East Coast elites. At the same time, St. Clair directed a White House legal staff of approximately fifteen—while busily engaged on another front with Leon Jaworski and the Watergate Special Prosecution Force.

In the committee, Doar divided his staff into two groups: one provided legal support for him and directed research into constitutional issues, while the other (largely headed by Cates) conducted various investigations of allegations
involving the Plumbers, the Watergate break-in and cover-up, Nixon’s personal finances, White House use of federal agencies for improper political purposes, and other alleged instances of misconduct such as the Cambodia bombing and the impoundment of funds.
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By most accounts, Chairman Rodino found in John Doar a man who matched his own caution. Committee members and staff were at sea for months trying to understand Doar’s direction and intent. Congressman Butler, who eventually voted to impeach the President, thought Doar to be like John Foster Dulles: “dull, duller, dulles.” He also believed that Doar favored impeachment; for Doar to enter the contest without ending in impeachment, Butler said, “would be like playing in the World Series and not hitting a home run.” Butler conceded that the staff had struggled to maintain objectivity, yet some observers, then and later, insisted that Doar was committed from the start to carrying out impeachment. One staffer, who claimed a place in Doar’s inner circle, wrote that Doar and this group never had any doubt about impeachment and would proceed to recommend it unless the President somehow presented overwhelming evidence of his innocence. She admitted some uncertainty as to when Doar “made his decision” to recommend impeachment, whether in March or July. Whatever Doar’s true feelings, he left behind him a wake of conflicting testimony as to his intelligence and ability. Fish praised him as a “giant,” while Flowers considered his work “tedious” and his performance like a “shaggy-dog joke.”
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Members complained that Doar treated them like dull-witted schoolchildren, and veteran staff people found him oblivious to the sensibilities of the members. A prominent staffer thought it symbolic that when Doar made his presentations to the committee, he usually occupied the chair reserved for witnesses. In the meantime, the members indicated that they were wary of Doar by consulting with the regular staff while he spoke. At times, the procedure resulted in the committee staff’s directing questions at members of the inquiry staff. For some, the contest eventually appeared as Doar
vs.
St. Clair, with the committee sitting as a jury.
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Much of the criticism of Doar centered on his desire to treat the committee as a grand jury, with himself as the members’ lawyer and mentor, much like the relation of the Special Prosecutor to the Watergate grand jury. Doar rejected any opportunity for the Nixon defense and its lawyers to make a case. The strategy eventually led Doar to deny St. Clair the right to cross-examine any witnesses that appeared before the committee, or to make any presentment of his own. This approach virtually dictated an impeachment, allowing the Senate then to evaluate the guilt or innocence of the accused. Doar betrayed his insensitivity to the political calculus: no member dared vote for impeachment without effective certainty of the President’s guilt. The consequences would have been disastrous. The Republicans naturally objected to Doar’s procedure—although their own lead counsel supported
Doar—but longtime committee staff members and liberals joined in opposing him. Rodino at first backed Doar, but in the face of a joint challenge by Edwards and Wiggins, he retreated. Edwards reminded Rodino that in 1970 counsel for Justice Douglas had exercised the right of participating and cross-examining. Edwards, a longtime liberal, realized the basic unfairness of Doar’s position; on a more practical level, he knew that it would only polarize the committee and give credence to the charges that the inquiry was partisan.
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A more serious criticism came from Leon Jaworski, who found Doar almost incapable of understanding the case. Jaworski remembered that lawyers on his staff had Doar in their office night after night, “coaching him, as poor John didn’t know which way was front.” Jaworski’s relationship with Rodino and Doar apparently was somewhat strained, as is typical of competitive agencies each anxious for a lion’s share of the credit. Rodino at one point had complained that Jaworski was withholding material, but the Special Prosecutor dismissed the allegation as a cover for Rodino and Doar’s own dilatoriness.
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In May 1974, Doar began to read to restless, bored, and confused members of the House committee a multivolume “Statement of Information,” a series of books compiled to illustrate the case against the President. During these presentations, Doar had instructed the staff not to offer any conclusions or intepretations, reflecting his determination to maintain the appearance of fairness. Yet the members craved understanding, particularly an understanding of how numerous, isolated incidents demonstrated a consistent pattern of presidential abuse of power, obstruction of justice, or failure to faithfully execute the laws.
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Democrats chafed at Doar for being dilatory and insensitive to their needs. Republicans, however, had a different and more serious problem: they believed that their Chief Counsel was unsympathetic to the President and supported Doar’s every move. The minority had named Albert Jenner, a Chicago lawyer, their Chief Counsel in January. Jenner had a reputation as a formidable litigator. He had been senior counsel to the Warren Commission, which had investigated President Kennedy’s assassination, and had played a prominent role some years earlier in challenging the authority of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Railsback had sponsored Jenner’s appointment. But Republicans may well have had cause for concern from the outset, when Jenner praised Doar and spoke about their “joint effort.”

A week after his appointment, Jenner publicly stated that the President might be impeached for the actions of his aides, even if he were unaware of them. Attorney General Saxbe called this a “bizarre theory,” while Wiggins furiously criticized Jenner, asking whether he had “appreciated the significance” of his remarks, and urged him to recant. Jenner’s deputy, Sam Garrison, clearly more devoted than his chief to the partisan concerns of the
Republicans, complained to Hutchinson that Jenner’s cooperation with Doar had undercut the Republican position on numerous matters, particularly on St. Clair’s participation. Garrison contended that Jenner considered himself answerable primarily to Doar, not to the Republican members. He feared that Jenner might say publicly that he was obligated to voice the minority’s position although he disagreed with it. Jenner’s role was a “farce,” Garrison told Hutchinson; the Chicago lawyer was acting as if he had a “vested right” to his position. The minority tensions became public, and a columnist accused Hutchinson of instructing Garrison to obstruct the proceedings. But the real issue was whether the divided Republicans on the committee could have a single counsel to advocate their views.
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Republican staffers saw Jenner as caught between the conflicting ambitions of Railsback and Wiggins. Yet they knew that Jenner had not devoted much energy to the problem, as he was constantly worrying about the time it was taking and the drain it had imposed on his Chicago practice. His warmest defenders, such as Cohen, recognized that Jenner had alienated many Republican colleagues. Butler, almost desperate to find an advocate for the President, realized by spring that Jenner was not “speaking for us.” Even Railsback, his sponsor, acknowledged that Jenner had forgotten his role as adviser and instead had become an advocate for impeachment. Some more conservative Republicans, such as Latta, attacked Jenner for his earlier defense of the civil liberties of prostitutes and complained that he had chaired the American Bar Association Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities—a liberal bastion within the ABA, according to Latta. By February Garrison criticized Jenner for his support of the committee staff’s broad interpretation of the House’s impeachment authority.

In May Hogan urged Hutchinson to dismiss Jenner—labeling him the “Assistant Majority Counsel.” Hogan charged Jenner with impeding the Republican effort and having been “derelict in serving our needs.” As matters moved to a climax in July, the Republicans—including those leaning toward impeachment, such as Hogan and McClory—voted to inform Rodino that Garrison was their Chief Counsel but that Rodino could consider Jenner as an Associate Committee Counsel. They requested, and Rodino agreed, that Jenner sit at the table with Doar. Thus the anomaly developed that the evidence converted the Minority Counsel to the majority position. By then, according to his later testimony, Jenner had been convinced that Nixon “was and is a liar of the most vicious kind.” He also disparaged committee Republicans who had sought to rush the inquiry in the hopes of gaining an early acquittal before all the evidence had been developed.
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The issue of secrecy plagued the House committee during much of the inquiry. The matter concerned both White House lawyers, who supplied material,
and the Special Prosecutor, who worried that premature revelations might impair future prosecutions. The issue touched the members’ sensibilities, because security requirements prevented their unlimited access to evidentiary material. More fundamentally, Doar and Jenner perceived the inquiry as a grand-jury proceeding, an interpretation that, by giving the committee’s work the secrecy of a grand jury, would severely restrict the President’s defense efforts. The majority and minority counsels met with St. Clair early in February and, in effect, told him how the inquiry would proceed. St. Clair strenuously objected and persuaded congressmen from both parties to reject the grand-jury approach, a rare victory for him.
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The committee’s assertiveness on the grand-jury issue led to open sniping by members who feared a too-independent staff. Early in March, Railsback and Dennis complained that Doar’s letters to St. Clair had not been circulated to the committee. A month later, Latta, an outspoken Nixon partisan, demanded to know “who is directing this inquiry, whether it is the staff or whether it is this committee.” Latta had support from other Republicans—and in time, from liberal Democrats who objected to Doar’s aloofness. After April, the staff tended, at least on the record, to defer more to the committee, and Rodino seemed particularly sensitive to his colleagues’ complaints that the committee did not control its own inquiry. Latta persisted in attacking the staff for its bias against the President. When Doar discussed illegal campaign contributions, Latta pressed him about similar offenses in Lyndon Johnson’s campaigns. In June, Latta openly mocked his colleagues who agreed with Doar that the committee should hear only a few witnesses and deny St. Clair the right to call his own. Doar had asked for a July 12 cutoff date for testimony; by then, Nixon’s supporters no longer favored a quick end to the inquiry, instead believing that lengthy debate and testimony served their cause best.
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The committee’s dealings with the President over its requests for tapes sharpened the internal conflict. When the White House submitted its first batch of materials in mid-March, Rodino complained about the lack of cooperation and White House attempts to characterize the committee’s work as a fishing expedition. Brooks called the Administration tactic “White House hucksterism,” but Sandman said that he had heard enough personal attacks on the President and vigorously supported him. Rodino, determined both to defend Doar and to maintain amicable relations among members and staff, replied that the staff had done an excellent job and thanked Sandman for this thoughts and concerns. Again, the grand-jury analogy raised rancor, as some members saw that model as diminishing their role and making them merely the clients of the staff. Mezvinsky had no problem with the theory, however, and argued that St. Clair would have his opportunity to demonstrate “his own renowned trial techniques” in the Senate. But other Democrats realized that theory counted for nothing compared to the necessity
for fairness. That need dictated something other than an abstract application of a grand-jury style.
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The committee’s pursuit of the tapes provoked passionate attacks from the White House. Presidential adviser Father John McLaughlin appeared at the Harvard Law School Republican Club on March 29 and compared the Judiciary Committee proceedings to Joseph Stalin’s purge trials. He singled out his fellow Jesuit, Congressman Drinan, for his most vitriolic attacks: “No jury in the country would tolerate this man sitting in judgment.… He has all the openmindedness of the Sanhedrin judging Christ,” McLaughlin complained.
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Throughout April, the committee had bristled at the White House’s delay in releasing more tapes. After extensive wrangling, it approved a bipartisan compromise subpoena on April 11. Two weeks later, St. Clair requested and received an additional five days to comply, a deadline he met when the President released the tape transcripts on April 30. The next day, Doar informed the committee that his staff had reason to believe the edited transcripts they had received (the tapes and Dictabelts had not yet arrived) had numerous inaccuracies and omissions that could be rectified with better listening equipment. Clearly, at this point, the majority considered the President in contempt of the subpoena. Rodino, in a rare display of combativeness, contended that the House, and not the President, must determine the relevance of evidence.