Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (1/2)
[00.24.11] Mr. WIGGINS. I will be happy to yield to my colleague from California for the purpose of completing his sentence. Mr. WALDIE. Well, I appreciate. that. If I--it is hard for me to complete a sentence when I want to analyze a conversation, but let me just--- Mr. WIGGINS. Do the best you can. [Laughter] . Mr. WALDIE. I appreciate that. I do appreciate that. I referred to March 21 and the conversation that I will be reading.. -will be a description of how the Ellsberg case became a national security case. The, President is told by Dean about the break-in out there and he says the President said, "I don't, know what, the hell we did that for," and Dean said, "I don't either, and the President Said, "Who in the name of God did that?"--and then move on to page 112, of the March 21 transcript and the President says, "Properly, it, has to do with the Ellsberg thing. I do not know what the hell uh"--and Haldeman says, "Well.-- The President says, "I don't know. The President says, "What is the answer on that? How do you keep that out? I don't know, -well we cant keep it out if Hunt"--"the point is, it's irrelevant." Dean says, "You might, you might put it on a national security grounds basis, which really, it was." Haldeman says, "It absolutely is." And Dean says, "And just say that--uh." The President says, "Yeah." And the--- The CHAIRMAN. The, other minute of the gentleman has expired. Mr. WALDIE. Well. I really did not finish the sentence. [Laughter.] It is a long sentence. Mr. WIGGINS. I think you have, I think you have, Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining on this side? The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California has 8 minutes. Mr. WIGGINS. I will be happy to yield to my colleague from Ohio, Mr. Latta. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Ohio is recognized for 4 minutes. Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentleman from California. This is about the longest minute we have thus far. Let me say he mentioned one conversation that I think we ought to go back to a prior conversation. His minute did not permit him to do that. And I have reference to the first, time that the President of, the United States found out about this, months after the break-in. And that is the conversations between the President and John Dean On March 17, 1974. Let's read that. Ehrlichman "And this"--and the President spoke up and said, "In connection with Hunt?" Dean says, "In connection with Hunt and Liddy both", The President inquires, "They work for him?" Dean, "They--these fellows had to be some Idiots and we have learned after the fact. They went out and went into Dr. Ellsberg's doctor's office and they had--they were geared up with all this CIA equipment, cameras and the like, they turned the stuff back in to the CIA at, some point in time and left the film In the camera," Good sleuths, I might interject. "The CIA has not put this together, and they don't know what it all means right now." And the President says, "What in the world. what in the name Of" blank "was Ehrlichman having something," and this is unintelligible, "in the Ellsberg?" This is the first time he ever heard of it months after- this had taken place. Dean says, "They were trying to--this was a part of an operation in connection with the Pentagon Papers. They were--the whole thing--they wanted to get Ellsberg's psychiatric record for some reason." President, "Well, this is the first I ever heard of this. I"-unintelligible again, and perhaps some expletives, that were not deleted-"care about Ellsberg was not our problem," and Dean says, "That is right." Now, the gentleman from Iowa has mentioned something about the FBI not getting into this case and I think we had better talk about that. It was brought out before our committee. The late J. Edgar Hoover happened to know the father-in-law of Mr. Ellsberg and the FBI was not responding to the prodding of the administration to get on With investigating these leaks to which I shall refer in considerable length when we get on general debate on the articles themselves. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time to Mr. Wiggins. Mr. WIGGINS. Mr. Chairman? The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman has 3 1/2 minutes remaining out the total. Mr. WIGGINS. May I be recognized? The CHAIRMAN. It The gentleman is recognized. Mr. WIGGINS. Mr. Chairman, it was my intention to discuss the Huston plan and to clarify for the benefit of our members the origin of that plan and to demonstrate that, it was a plan of the top people in this country recommended to the President of the United States, and he acted pursuant to their advice -and approved their plan for a period of about 4 or 5 days and thereafter canceled his prior approval upon the, recommendation of the Attorney General. I only intended to take the time on that subject because some of my colleagues seem to be concerned about that 4- or 5-day period of approval by the President of the United States in 1970. Rather in my remaining moments, Mr. Chairman, I Want to try to place this Plumbers issue in its proper focus. The question is not whether the creation of the Plumbers was justified. There is no law nor regulation nor rule nor act of Congress prohibiting the President of the United States from establishing unit within the executive branch for the purpose of coordinating intelligence activities. That is not the issue. The issue is rather whether or not the activities of that, once Created, constituted an impeachable offense with respect to the President. We know that they do not unless the President approved of them, acquiesced in them, condoned them.