Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 13, 1973 (1/2)
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 13, 1973 (1/2)
[00.36.16] Mr. EDMISTEN. All right. he returned to the committee and did you not speak to him about his conversations at, the White House? Mr. STANS. I have no recollection of having spoken to him about that. It is possible that somewhere along the line, he reported on those conversations, but I don't recall it. Mr. Sloan may have a better recollection on that than I do. Mr. EDMISTEN. In quotes, do you recall "raking him out" about that, maybe, criticizing him? Mr. STANS. I didn't understand Your question. Mr. EDMISTEN. Did you "rake him out" about having that meeting in the White House? Mr. STANS. Oh, absolutely not. Mr. EDMISTEN. All right. Now, do I understand it that your concept of Mr. Mitchell's role in the whole campaign is that he chaired those meetings you spoke about? Mr. STANS. The meetings of the budget committee? Mr. EDMISTEN. That is right. Mr. STANS. Yes, we were really cochairmen of the budget committee but I deferred to Mr. Mitchell. The meetings were held in his office or near his office and in effect, I considered him the chairman of the meeting. Mr. EDMISTEN. So you viewed him as the man in charge, didn't you, of the whole campaign? Mr. STANS. Yes, but not, in charge of the finance committee. Mr. EDMISTEN All right;, but overall, you said that YOU really had nothing to do with the campaign, that you considered him in charge of the whole campaign process. Mr. STANS. Yes, he was campaign director, That was his title. Mr. EDMISTEN. All right. When you were approached about giving Some money to Mr. Liddy, you called up Mr. Mitchell, did you not? Mr. STANS. I went to See him. Mr. EDMISTEN. And I think yesterday in response to a, question I Posed, you said, "Do you mean, John, that if Magruder tells Sloan to pay these amounts or any amounts to Gordon Liddy, that he should do so? And he said, "That is right." Now', before that, Mr. Mitchell had said to you, "He will have to ask Magruder because Magruder is in charge of the campaign and he directs the spending." Now, wasn't that incredible to you? Mr. STANS. NO, not in the, context in which I understood it. What Mitchell was saying is that Magruder is the man who is handling the details of the campaign, Magruder is the man who is working out, the, Programs Magruder is the man who has the responsibility for directing the spending ending. When John Mitchell is before this committee, he can tell you better than I can what his function was, but I conceived his function to be that Of the political professional, the man who talked to the political leaders in' a State and organized the campaign in a State, the man who sought to bring about harmony in the campaign, and so on. I did not conceive of Mr. Mitchell as the man who said, "Let's spend $745,000 for public relations." He was in on the discussions on that, but he was the political professional, as I understood it. Magruder was the on-hand manager of the activity. Mr. EDMISTEN. All right, Mr. Stans, My last question is this: I know that you have subsequently read about the so-called CIA involvement of the Mexican transactions, but did you not have some inkling of that at the time that the Dahlberg-Mexican checks came up? Did somebody notify you that there was a possible CIA involvement, and, if so, who? Mr. STANS. The stories I have, been reading in the paper recently have been a great surprise to me about the discussions, between the heads of the CIA and the FBI because I was not aware that any of that was going on. But there was, one occasion when Bob Allen had complained to me that the attorney in Mexico was being harassed, that the FBI had demanded to know the name of his client, that this would have breached his lawyer-client privilege, find that the, FBI had threatened him that if he did not tell them who the client was in this matter, they were going to go to all the clients of the firm and find out. Allen called me and said, "Does the FBI have that much authority in a foreign country," and I said, "I do not know." I talked to either Mardian or John Dean, I can't recall which one it was and asked them the question. Sometime later a day or two later, I got a reply. It said that it appears as though this lawyer may be a CIA source and if that is the case, the investigation will stop at that point. Now, that is all I heard or know about, that situation. I can't place that conversation in terms of a date. But I did get that one report. The investigation did not cease and eventually was carried on until I was told the investigation was over. [00.41.44]