Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 27, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 27, 1974 (1/2)
[00.26.20] The CHAIRMAN. The time of the, gentleman from Massachusetts has expired. All time has expired and the question is on the motion of, the--- Mr. WIGGINS. Mr. Chairman, you have not recognized anybody on this side. The CHAIRMAN. The Chair did not intentionally overlook the minority side. I do not know whether it was subconscious, but nonetheless yield to--I recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Sandman. Mr. SANDMAN, Thank you. I sure did not want to be counted out without a shot. The thing that amuses me the most today, what a difference 24 hours makes. Yesterday they had so much testimony they were afraid to put in nine simple sentences. 'Now today every other word they breathe is the word "specify". Isn't that unusual?, So unusual. Everything specific. But they have, not changed one word in the articles, have they, not a word. There has got to be a reason for this resistance. There has got to be a reason. You know what the reason is. When you tame it down to a time and a place and an activity , they do not have it. All they have is conjecture. They can tell you all about what Dean told somebody, Ehrlichman told somebody, what somebody else told somebody. This is going to be the, most unusual case in the history of man. they are going to prove the whole case against the President of the United States over in the Senate with tapes and no witnesses. Won't that be unusual? And this is what it all amounts to. Now, if I went through this thing paragraph by paragraph I could cite, with great detail no Presidential involvement, They know it, you know it, and I know it. Now, let us get down to a couple of these things, real specifics. Will we ever forget Petersen's answer to my question, the most daring question asked in the whole investigation to the Chief, the Chief of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice? When I asked Mr. Petersen, did you receive any information whatever from the very beginning up to the, present time that involves Presidential wrongdoing, that was a dangerous question and Mr. Petersen's answer was none. That is a pretty solid witness, I would say, for the President. If you go right down the list of all nine witnesses that, came before this committee, including the great John Dean you got the same kind of testimony. So witnesses are a lot stronger than this stuff that you are hearing here today. You can take it out-'of context, you can play up a particular article, you can do as Newsweek did, use only half of a sentence and leave off the five most important words. It is terrible, sure it is, but you and I know as lawyers it is not the kind of evidence that is going to convict anybody. Now there was such a coverup here, so much of an interference, between the President and his people, is it not unusual that not in a single case did the President ask for immunity for any of them. In fact, his move was to the contrary. He did not want any of them to have any immunity. He wanted them to tell the truth and he told every one of them, tell the truth, and it is reflected in this testimony that he said that. We, can say all we -want about these various things. John Dean, a man who had a mechanical memory, he could remember split seconds of what he was doing 9-1/2 years ago, almost consistently, but he could ,not remember what was in the papers that he burned up, the only thing he could not remember. Then when Hunt was involved in this thing and Hunt's safe was drilled, sounds like somebody did something they should not, does it not? Well, what happened? John Dean was told to take all of that stuff down to the FBI. He was told to do that. And he took everything down 'to the FBI except the two notebooks involving him and had information in that he said he could not remember what they said. The Patman Commission--this is the joke of the century. You know, when you pick on a big man, everybody gets in the act. You can see 'what has happened here. So it was with Mr. Patman. He had as much business involving himself in this case as anyone in the audience did. In fact, he tried a one-man investigation. You heard a little bit about that. And it was so bad that even the Democrats on that committee, which is a standing committee of the House, voted against his right to subpena a single witness. That is the kind of jurisdiction Mr. Patman had. So there was not any interference, here that meant anything. And we can go right on down the list. [00.31.41]