Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I join
my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this
committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr.
Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best
we can to give you as much assistance as possible.
Earlier today, we
heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
"We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that
document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not
included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But
through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have
finally been included in "We, the people."
Today I am an
inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the
solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is
complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator
to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
"Who can so
properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation
themselves?" "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses
which proceed from the misconduct of public men."¹ And that's what we're
talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or
violation of some public trust.
It is wrong, I
suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert
that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member
must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The
Constitution doesn't say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential
check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the
encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the
legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse
and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very
astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers -- and the judges the
same person.
We know the nature of
impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for
the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is
designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses.
"It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public
men."² The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to
remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President
swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence
of the executive.
The nature of
impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers
maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787
said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and
discounted and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to
be used only for great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North Carolina
ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: "We
do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check
the other."
"No one need be
afraid" -- the North Carolina ratification convention -- "No one need
be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity."
"Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of
the whole community," said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65.
"We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the
accused."³ I do not mean political parties in that sense.
The drawing of
political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must
proceed within the confines of the constitutional term "high crime[s] and
misdemeanors." Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said
that "Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the
land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as
to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can."
Common sense would be
revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot
to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform,
Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation.
Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems.
So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we
have before us is a big one.
This morning, in a
discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to
support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We're
told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this
morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.
The President did know
that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the
Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the
burglars arrested on June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of
June was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his
participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included
Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard
Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.
We were further
cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because
certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the
United States. There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this
committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The
committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material,
the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people
waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President
would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.
At this point, I would
like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions
the President has engaged in.
Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the
Virginia ratification convention. "If the President be connected in any
suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will
shelter him, he may be impeached."
We have heard time and
time again that the evidence reflects the payment to defendants money. The
President had knowledge that these funds were being paid and these were funds
collected for the 1972 presidential campaign. We know that the President met with
Mr. Henry Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and
immediately thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the
information Mr. Petersen was receiving. The words are: "If the President
is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to
believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached."
Justice Story:
"Impeachment" is attended -- "is intended for occasional and
extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put
into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from
violations." We know about the Huston plan. We know about the break-in of
the psychiatrist's office. We know that there was absolute complete direction
on September 3rd when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had
been made in Dr. Fielding's office, after having met with Mr. Ehrlichman and
Mr. Young. "Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties from
violation."
The Carolina
ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who
behave amiss or betray their public trust." Beginning shortly after the
Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has
engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the
lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has
made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which
the evidence will show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions,
impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the
public trust."
James Madison again at
the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts
to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with
the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the
President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the
secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to
compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the
processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts
to subvert the Constitution."
If the impeachment
provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses
charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned
to a 20th-century paper shredder!
Has the President
committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of
conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That's the question. We know
that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the
question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations,
guide our debate, and guide our decision.
I yield back the
balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
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