The Wars of Watergate (98 page)

Much of St. Clair’s argument came down to Nixon’s need to take decisive action on behalf of the national interest. Thus, as Daniel Ellsberg used the national media to justify his conduct, so, too, the President could disseminate derogatory information. “[I]t happens every day.… That is the American way of life.” Yes, Nixon had ordered Henry Petersen to stay away from any investigation into “very sensitive matter[s],” such as spying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The President, his lawyer argued, must be judged on his conduct, not on what he said in frustration or anger; he was imperfect, as we all are. “But it would take a great deal of imperfection, and we have argued to this committee it has to be of serious criminal nature,” to justify impeachment.

The cover-up, St. Clair realized, was at the heart of the matter and that, as always, required the President’s defenders to impugn John Dean’s credibility—the credibility that had earned Dean the grudging respect of the U.S. Attorneys, the Senate Select Committee, and the Special Prosecutor. But St. Clair argued that Dean operated on his own to maintain the cover-up and that Nixon never had approved payments to the Watergate burglary defendants. He thought the record already offered ample support for the President, but at this point he again produced a hitherto undisclosed portion of a tape transcript, this time from March 22, 1973, when Nixon told Haldeman: “I don’t mean to be blackmailed by Hunt. That goes too far.” That was the “evidence,” St. Clair announced, that was the “fact” that the President did not deliberately plot to obstruct justice. Others stood accused for their deeds; they would stand trial, but the President himself had no culpability. The whole affair, St. Clair said, would be resolved because of Nixon’s “cooperation
and … contribution to the end result.” Again, he reminded the committee that the American people demanded “clear evidence or justification” for impeachment. “And I submit that does not exist in this case,” concluded St. Clair.

St. Clair’s dramatic introduction of a new transcript backfired. Chairman Rodino dropped his customary aplomb, furious that once again St. Clair had used subpoenaed material that the White House had denied to the committee. Several Republican moderates demanded to see the entire transcript in order to evaluate the remark in context. Nixon’s lawyer sheepishly admitted that he had no power to produce the whole transcript: “There is only one person that can.… It is the President’s view that this portion relates to the blackmail allegation.” St. Clair had offered a rude reminder that Nixon intended to dictate the ground rules. More in sadness than in anger, Railsback complimented St. Clair on his “forceful” and “fair” presentation, but he urged him to relay to the President the committee’s insistence that he must comply with their subpoenas if the members were to judge him fairly. Privately, Railsback and other Republican moderates were furious, convinced that Nixon simply had not been as forthcoming as he had promised. St. Clair had quickly negated any pluses he had earned.

Flowers thought that St. Clair’s performance was “the most disappointing final act” he had ever seen—nothing “substantive,” no “new twist.” Indeed, for Flowers, St. Clair’s appearance had turned the tide against the President, not so much because of the counsel’s lack of ability as because he had a client who had not given him full cooperation and had again unnecessarily challenged the committee’s authority. The new tape disclosure, Flowers, thought, amounted to a “bad show,” an insult to other lawyers.
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Doar’s presentation began on July 19 and concluded the next day. By way of contrast with St. Clair, Doar embraced all the matters at issue. His argument lacked St. Clair’s succinctness and dramatic impact, however, and his diffuse approach became apparent at the outset. Doar distributed five sets of proposed articles of impeachment, but he told the members that he offered them only for discussion purposes; he and Albert Jenner would listen to the members’ views and rework the draft articles prior to the public debates scheduled for the following week. The drafts prepared by Doar and his staff proved unsatisfactory for those members still undecided or still searching for a proper rationale for impeaching the President. But Doar finally gave the committee his conclusion: the evidence justified impeachment.

Doar described his own anguish, assuring members that he had “not the slightest bias” against the President and would not willingly do him “the smallest, slightest injury.” But he was sensitive to abuses of power and
the subversion of the Constitution—actions that he would require any president to explain. What was at stake, Doar contended, was how one viewed presidential powers. For him, St. Clair’s argument had the case “upside down”—St. Clair’s concepts excused too much and allowed too much latitude. Doar was struck by St. Clair’s omissions of incidents and evidence, as much as he was impressed by the symmetry and logic of his argument. St. Clair had argued that being president justified some of Nixon’s actions; Doar turned that proposition inside out. In the ordinary course of affairs, concealing one’s mistake might be understandable, but “this was not done by a private citizen.” The President of the United States, Doar contended, had used the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, and his aides to obstruct justice. “It required perjury, destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, all crimes. But, most important,” Doar concluded, “it required deliberate, contrived, continued, and continuing deception of the American people.” That evidence, Doar assured his listeners, would “help and reason with you” to reach a verdict.
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Two days later, Sam Garrison, the committee minority’s Deputy Counsel, made the case for most committee Republicans. Butler, who knew Garrison as “Hanging Sam” from his prosecution work in Roanoke, Virginia, thought it amusing that Garrison urged the members to be “prudent prosecutors.” Like St. Clair, Garrison emphasized the President’s cooperation and the overriding consideration that he had acted in pursuance of his proper constitutional duties. More than St. Clair, however, Garrison insisted on holding the committee to the narrow interpretation of impeachment, one that required showing the commission of an indictable crime. In Garrison’s summary, Nixon had not participated in the cover-up of the Watergate affair and so had no liability for any obstruction of justice. The President admittedly had had subordinates who acted inappropriately, Garrison conceded. But Nixon himself was oblivious of their machinations. “I was sitting there like a dumb turkey,” Nixon said to Ron Ziegler in a tape transcript of June 4, 1973. “[Y]ou might every well consider that fact to be of critical importance” in determining whether the President should be impeached, Garrison told the members.
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On July 23, the day after Garrison’s summation, Hogan became the first Republican to announce that he would vote for impeachment. The President had abused power, and he had obstructed justice, Hogan contended; he was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt of having committed these impeachable offenses.” The White House denounced Hogan’s “defection,” and noted
that he was a candidate for the Maryland Republican gubernatorial nomination. That same day the committee met late in the afternoon to agree on procedures for its public debate, scheduled to begin the next evening.

Flowers moved that the committee hold ten hours of debate “on whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States.” Following this, the committee might consider a resolution, together with articles of impeachment, to report to the full House. Hutchinson and other Nixon loyalists challenged Flowers, querying how they could debate without specific articles to consider. Flowers thought that Doar’s drafts of impeachment articles offered some foundation for debate. His motives reflected his own political concerns. He had decided to vote for impeachment; still, he had to justify his decision in a convincing manner to his conservative Alabama constituents. Flowers preferred a lengthy debate on the merits of impeachment, its viability, and its applicability to Richard Nixon, followed by a general resolution in which the members simply would vote once, up or down, on the President. This procedure would, he apparently believed, go over better in his district—“one big gusto,” he called it. These were games, Flowers conceded privately, “but they were very important games.”

Flowers believed that Rodino would deliver Democratic votes for his motion. But Kastenmeier, a leader of the liberal bloc, prepared a substitute motion providing that the committee debate a resolution of impeachment, together with specific articles, and that each article be voted on separately. The committee approved the substitute by a narrow 21–16 vote. Most liberals as well as presidential loyalists supported the Kastenmeier motion, while the Chairman, Southern Democrats, moderate Republicans, and a few scattered liberals opposed it. The vote reflected Rodino’s willingness to accommodate the Republicans and southerners who had decided to impeach the President. According to Flowers and Fish, however, that budding coalition for impeachment almost came asunder, since they themselves considered Kastenmeier’s resolution a betrayal. The difference certainly measured the very real limits of Rodino’s influence.
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The committee scheduled the opening of its debate for the next evening, July 24. The nationally televised spectacle was about to begin; first, however, a truly dramatic development unfolded behind the scenes. Despite the procedural fuss, the Democrats were about to gain their crucial bipartisan coalition, and the President was about to lose preciously needed political and moral support. The months of the staff’s labors, as well as some careful cultivation by committee members, finally secured the most desired prize of all: votes for impeachment by Republicans and Southern Democrats who also happened to constitute a rainbow of ideological commitments. Much to
its consternation, the group was known popularly as the “fragile coalition.” They saw nothing fragile at all about themselves. Cohen, for example, needed no comfort from a group, for after St. Clair’s final argument, Cohen had known his own mind.

For months, these men had realized that they might have a special role, whether it would be played out for or against the President. They had “this thing” in their hands, as they liked to say, but the prospect neither pleased them nor made them flinch. They did not like some of the surrounding company—including the contentious partisans defending the President, the liberals who hated Richard Nixon and smelled blood, and even the President and his stonewalling. They were self-conscious. But why not? The agony and burdens of decision surely heighten an awareness of the stakes.

Ignoring earlier signals that he might suffer some defections, Hutchinson spoke out in caucuses of Republican committee members on July 10 and again on the eighteenth, telling his colleagues that he did not believe any of them would desert the President. He demanded to know if any intended to do so. Railsback felt that Hutchinson here sought to embarrass Cohen, who had joined the Democrats on several key votes and who many suspected would vote for impeachment. Fish was “amazed” by Hutchinson’s unswerving loyalty; seven months of revelations apparently had not touched him at all. But by July 24, Rhodes and House Whip Leslie Arends (IL) advised Republicans “to keep their own counsel” until all evidence was in and arguments concluded. The House leadership understood the committee’s growing restlessness.
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The coalition emerged rather haphazardly, and only after each of the men had come to a decision on his own. Among the Democrats, Walter Flowers represented Alabama’s Seventh District, one that contained the largest percentage of blacks in the state at a time when blacks were beginning to vote in ever-larger numbers. In 1968 George Wallace had captured 61 percent of the district’s vote, while Nixon received only 10 percent. Flowers had a reputation as a rising Southern star; a prominent committee liberal remembered him as an “elegant guy,” who gave the liberals votes when they needed him. James Mann represented a district in South Carolina that was dominated by textile-management executives who usually voted Republican. Conservative rating groups gave him a 90 percent approval in 1972, while the AFL-CIO put him at zero. Ray Thornton of Arizona, like Flowers, represented his state’s largest concentration of blacks, but his was a district that gave Wallace 46 percent of its vote in 1968. Thornton received barely a majority in his first race, the 1972 primary. In 1973, the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) gave him a 48-percent rating.

The Republican group, too, varied widely. Virginian Caldwell Butler received a zero rating from both the ADA and labor in 1973, and a 78-percent approval rating from conservatives. He had succeeded Richard Poff, a leader
of House Republican conservatives. William Cohen represented a Maine district evenly split between blue-collar and service-industry workers; appropriately, labor gave him a 64-percent rating in 1973. Like Thornton and Butler, Cohen was in his first term. Hamilton Fish may have had the most interesting history. His Hudson River Valley constituency had been a longtime conservative-Republican bastion. Democrats were a forgotten species there, perhaps best remembered (though hardly with approval) for electing Franklin D. Roosevelt to the state senate in 1910, largely because of a split in the Republican Party. Fish’s father, Hamilton Fish, Sr., had served as a Congressman in the 1930s and 1940s and often was a particular target of FDR’s wrath. The elder Fish must have been certain that his son was pursuing the wrong president. During the impeachment controversy, Fish, Senior, signed public advertisements supporting the President and regularly implored his son to remain loyal to Nixon. But the younger Fish had supported the President on less than half the congressional roll calls prior to 1974. In 1968, he narrowly won election because the state Conservative Party had fielded a candidate who took away much of the traditional Republican vote. The candidate, Gordon Liddy, agreed not to campaign too hard, and in 1969 Fish helped him secure a position in the Treasury Department.