Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 14, 1973
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 14, 1973 - Jeb Magruder
U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT): "In other words, attitudes that were prevalent in the White House and brought over to the Committee To Re-Elect the President." Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) Jeb Magruder: "That's correct." Senator Weicker: "I just would then like to make my parting shot in the commendation to you because I think you really squared this on that one, that I don't know who in governmental sense thought that the Constitution of the United States wasn't up to it. I don't know who thought that in an election sense the American people weren't up to it, but would you say at this point in time that, left alone, those things will work pretty well? They don't have to be added to?" Magruder: "I could not agree more with you, Senator, now." Senate Select Committee members seated in row: Sen. Weicker, Senator Edward Gurney (R-FL), Minority Counsel Fred Thompson, Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), Senator and Committee Chairman Sam Ervin (D-NC), and Majority Counsel Samuel Dash; adult Caucasian male staffers seated in BG, adult Caucasian press and photographers in FG. Sen. Ervin recognizes U.S. Senator Herman Talmadge (D-GA). Sen Talmadge: "Mr. Magruder, you have been forthright and candid in testimony before this committee and I congratulate you it. I was handed a book written by Woodrow Wilson, 'The New Freedom,' during the noon hour, written in 1913, 60 years ago, and I think two quotations from that book are particularly in order at this point. I read from page 111, chapter six: 'Let There Be Light.' 'The concern of patriotic men is to put our Government again on its right basis by substituting the popular will for the rule of gaudiness, the processes of common counsel for those of private arrangement. In order to do this, a first necessity is to open the doors and let in the light on all affairs which the people have a right to know about. In the first place, it is necessary to open up all of the processes of our politics. They have been too secret, too complicated, too roundabout, they have consisted too much of private conferences and secret understandings.' Then on page 113: 'If there is nothing to conceal, then why conceal it? If it's a public game, why play it in private? If it is a public game, then why not come out in the open and play it in public?' Don't you find that passage particularly appropriate in light of today's problems with which we are confronted?" Magruder: "I would agree with you, Senator."
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, June 14, 1973 - Jeb Magruder
U.S. Senator Herman Talmadge (D-GA): "Mr. Magruder, in your testimony this morning you implicated a number of former officials high in our government in a series of crimes, either in the planning or the execution or the cover-up. I think the thing the American people want to know most at this point, and what this committee is concerned with most at this point, is how many people involved in the government now, or formerly were in the government, were involved in these series of crimes that were committed? Now, this morning, as I understand it, you were somewhat detailed, you named names, times, places involving a substantial number of officials who were formerly in the government of the United States in extremely responsible positions. Do you reaffirm that former Attorney General Mr. Mitchell, who was at that time director of the Campaign to Re-Elect the President, played a prominent part in the planning, execution, and the cover-up of these matters that have recently been exposed, known as the Watergate affair?" Deputy Director on the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) Jeb Magruder: "Yes, sir."