1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-07-20; Part 2 of 4

asbellpossibility of itand you have a very interestingstatement on pollination commencing the morning of juneseventeen when he became a lawyer information was inand if you're going to anunfortunate situationthe situation which i was precluded from acting according to the dictates ofmy personal desires are anthemssituation in which government memo only horrible assault was one of not becoming educated and toconduct a lot about what it isthe

newyork times what's not going toraise up your personal desires or interestsknow certainly don't think and a lot ofeconomists i don't think that's a fair reading maybe to me because you're aproponent for acting according to the dictates of political conscience to servemy conscience is one thing and ethics of my profession demanded that time something elseobtaining the information they think of yourprofession i don't thinkthat statement indicates that's what i was trying to make amr liddy impart information mayjune twenty firstwhich had it been important in the less than two months

before i would have had him arrested i was a former assistant attorney general unitedstates my boss was the former attorney general united states my best friendswas the attorney general united states and he was importantinformation that may in the case not only that crime but aseries of other crimes perpetrated by people in thewhite house that i've worked fornow that's all i was trying to savemy being drawn inexorably into this situationproves conscience even if you felt that these activitieswere at the potential of having the president of the united states todecide the ethics of your profession require youto keep a littlesenator i mean i made the

man i worked on the rival the widening ofapplause he imparted to me aknowledge of other felonies as i read whilei was duty bound not to disclose that conferenceon the morningsthat data into loneliness really have to ohi think i probably would've been subject to disciplinary action severedisconnection for say i have never practiced for a whole i don't knowhow people react to thesesituations they carry these things in their mind they can't disclose thatthis wasn't no debate the ethics of their profession prevented him fromdisclosing information ought to bonds blew wanted to discuss this witness the mitchellthat day precondition to my

information and plans are discussed this with most immigrant no suro no test it with anyone else but mr mitchelland was mr mitchellreport was affixed tokeep the guns out customers will have to speak for itselfthe committee on june sevenapparently one of the leading servicescommitteewe still believe that you werealso was the living those serves to explain it is counsel for thecommittee and he was an employee of the committee i told him that as an

employee of the committee speaking in confidence although it could notmaintain this is present attorney in that iowa poll has confidence in the laband he one of those information on the potential of injuring your major climate committeeaccepted so i did not keep myself i toldthat was the reason i insisted on that conditionbut if you're just a few months ago you would havei wouldn't have been in a position of being his attorney two months agoone of the assistant attorney general do you everi would do i would have taken whatever procedures were necessary tissue he was brought tojusticemr matt senator lowell weicker will

probe martins duties at the justice department and to enroll in the pentagon papers case fornow we're going to take a break public television's coverage of the senate watergate hearings will continue after apart for a station identification a bridge to coverage of these hearings isprovided as a public service by the member stations of pbs and public broadcastingservicefb theplay

and that continues its coverage of hearings by the senate select committee on presidential

campaign activities you again correspondent jim lehrer as we goback to the hearing's other why cares about question robert martinin your testimonyyou indicated that we went tothe miami convention wouldyou suggest that to i think a newwriter and many others that youwant to have a memorandum you would be glad towrite a memorandum setting for your knowledge of this manner and thatyou were subsequently learned not to writethis is i think you're referring to theconversation with mr mitchell yes isuggest that memorandum pitch and then

subsequently my correct word but not theus or even mr mitchellgoes missingthefindings thatindividual is just to turn you knowi didn't think i didn't think the decision was alive when it was parked inretrospect i think he would agree withyou on the situations arisen soyou want to win every note andi thought that the memorandum should be prepared for his signature for the files toexplain the situation as that then existednow

they'll call you also talked to mr mcgregor at the miami convention getsa new medications right therematters series you'll hearabout it came in the context senator of hishaving made a series of statements regarding mepresently employeeslocal utility isuggested to him that there were some serious if there was a seriousexposure with respect to certain poison the committee should be made awareof that and hopefully it to prevent him frommaking further statements that might put them in a better light stepsand turned aroundhe told me as i recall he was exhilarating on leave before i

got in the ruling that he had been assured before i took the job butno unemployment committee at that time had been involved he accepted thatand he didn't want to hear any more about it worksand yet at that momenttoo that such assurances that given theword that i think a very important what i told him should'veindicated that two of mr and itgrew yousir i try as occasions prior to thattime and i think that was the last attemptto communicate with the humans do bythat time i was pretty much out of order iswrong

twenty twenty twenty fourthreeyearscallpentagon papers into the kissinger taps and you're handling ofinternal security provisions for yearsnineteen seventy onei'm not i'm not really have these things

and you want a lead late september someonewas far earlier than that just to mentionthat's right that's rightfor his victims itry to relate as best i can legally that they were not merely ordinarychannels earlier in his office safe thathe his opinion was that he was going to be terminated prettysoon he was concerned about what would happen to them and they fell on the possession of hissuccessor at that timehe also indicated to the what was he referring to is theriver in a while for a lot of national security

surveillance that were in his positiondid he have that timeindicated also to you as to who possessed the summariesof the law i don't recallspecific conversations senator ideabecause of thenumber of them i was insuredtheirsalaries and correspondentsin order to reduce ourprize initial communication we did you then go to theattorney general years after his recommendation on this that i've been

asked recommendation i don't think i really related to the attorney general what mr solomontotally and a dj you don't give you responses to howto handle mr sullivan oh no sirwhat it hasto do with islam mrsullivan is a friend of mine and i think he probably had injury a quicker access to me thananyone else on the court and he feels thisis the slight rather than clinton is the media's truedirector of the fbi based on what he told me he was concerned about the voterswhat were those momentsmy best recollection is that hethought the director might use as i said

these logs to maintain hisposition as director of i don't know letters to sell his recollection of itis that that's my recollectionand to give you the windwill use these laws to maintain thati've given to the best i can see them with thesubstances you're not going toresolve prior tohealth or evening the president to get any portion of the materials of the you know mostunion in your meeting with the presidenton thisand what did you describe the president as

the situation believe i simply told inresponse to his question with mr silva hallwayand did you tell the president that he receivedno instructions from the attorney general or that's not in any wayfirst i told the attorney general and the next thing ididn't hear from the attorney general and the next thing i knew it was sometimelater the attorney general at that time as i recall as the americanbar association convention in england in londonand while the orderjamiematerial for this albumdid you know at that time the time of those instructions of thematerial being handed over to why

mr sullivan included more than just material held oneofficial be veryspecificwe're centrally it hasn'tbeen easy foreignminister orban for example had none of the summaries another correspondents based onthese attacks lead getting inthere is a procedure that we're very specificand martin was not be an objectsought to assure that walter hill's connected with these attackswere collected by one man with the song to be turned over to be turned over in the

poster i was given was given theobligation of checking with drkissinger and with mr holder wantto ensure that they have copies of their salariesbut they were never collected or deliberatelythey collected wants to sell no circuit so theonly thing that only task that was assigned to mr sabowith the handover to you what he personallynothing else that's rightyou indicate there was a correspondencecourse

martin i think if we go over the testimony given in here this morning indicated therewas there were some raised and possibly correspondents based on those laws mr sullivan toldme that there were blogs some ways and correspondencein his invisible inhis possession years and nothing turned over to you came fromany other source except for his own personalhero of our eurocorrectyes if you live coverage of writing etc maybe i could help youi wish i had a song here i'm sure that you have a song hereso he created the first andleila describe what his orders wereis or anything further i don't wanna leave and say no i don't want you

to speculate on hearsay information your first and justyou're telling this committee you returned to mrsolomon ordered and turn over those materialsin his possession relatives of the kissinger timesi didn't order him i told him what my instructions were in etceterai believe i told him that for myinstructions came from i may not divide one mayor said the attorney general i'm not suremy recollection is that i told him that i thought the presidentand those were my instructions and so that at that momentin time you have nothing further to do with empty out of his drawers new materials are generallyreceive that you receive those materials like that notion that not onlywhen you listen i don't recall some time later

one that blends morninghe didn't havebut my conversation with them took place and miles or wassometime later in a matter of hours or in aday event todayluckyif there wasn't he wasn't usingplanes i don't thinkyou would have thought anything of it

so i did not expressions of urgencybelieve that you see in those on the part of a cell you thinkthey're rather strange that these go well you justmaterials and over to the director of the fbi onpurpose was take custodymartini can't say thati didn't knowthe dispute between mr sullivanwas he says

now believe i believe mrsolomon assessment and i would say the president made a judgment and a judgment basedon has to solve thisand you tryand recollected again as to recruit on the laptop when yourrequest and that's all when you receive the troops fromour campusit made some reference to the fact that you contacted certain individuals to try to get thejournals wrote the same set of takes off on my ownthere'sa list of all thesome areas that had been sent to drkissinger in the present they're the only ones to receive some marines i

i'm not sure it was question about this i think the attorney general receivedsome of all of the prey isn't wanted to makesure that each of these people had in their possession summariesthat had been sent to them by the fbi you haven'tnot just hermr paul helmke of the president and i requested ideamr i believe i gave mr kohlmann a list of the documents which heused to i'm supposed to recede for him to check against what he had in hispossession believe i went to see dr an autopsy drkissinger john o'hagan is the president and they'd check their filesso this was not really a minor matterthis was a round of trying to pull together

all aspects of what we call the kissinger take is that we are for it wasn'tfind out if he had all of hisson so i didn't like anythingi simply gave drkissinger or you're a copy of the summer is a list of thesestories by daines that they were to receive and i believegeneral haider while dr kissinger nih results went out and checkedto see if they had a hack everything they were supposed to do and that was the endof my discussions with them asone was the the matter was closed out as between yourself mrsaul when he delivered them when he delivered what hehad an unusual route thatyes

or youknow i wonder if we mightnot consider very carefully statement you made earlier wrote your contactslist are living on talking not about her contacts in late at night a realcontext mr liddy endured thepast is the says the attorney general of the internal security divisioni use it in one instance whereensemble with a treaty youremember the cohesion that contact withthis would you pleasetry and recollect as to whether or not you had many meetings with mr liddyrun out of the pentagon papers investigationi believe mr liddy came to my office

with lester young on one occasionthey have been more of the bestselling politicalthey were acting as a liaison with the state department defensedepartment just wear white house was very concerned about the pentagon paperscase i'm not in any wayknowledge why you have many illegal activities youconservatively also consider that moment i'm perfectly legitimate activityreport now anobsessionmeetings with disneya number of those meetings with a concert hall youindicate now but haven't won ensure that might not have been more than one meeting in hiscapacity as a liaison on the pentagon

it or i can't it may have been over there more thanonce that i know that he was making the rounds ofstate defense and justice thattime we were working we wereshort deadlinesfor this report to this circuitcourt to lift the court to the circuit court to the supreme courtand something less than three weeks and a la saddamor the heads of the national security agencyi worked with and otherssomewhere people i was working with bill macumber from state for buzz heart from the fenceand we had all kinds of people going from adults mr libby was there

during that turmoiljust as it was the headquarters for the operation i don't mean to be unfair tois my knowledge that there were many staff meetings just of the major issues that youknow i'm not trying to beinclusive i recall himi don't recall that any old staff thekeynesian that he came to myoffice was with freddie are going to get a report on how we were doing thepentagon papers case as i recallyour i believe your references today millionsguess he was on that because just thenyou say well no you drop back in time and

indicators to whether or not to use even the instructions personally from thepresident on the murder ballad onit i can't we should recall that there wasa communication between the president iwas made aware of the extreme concerned the president irecall the meeting in san clemente mostof that meeting concerned his expressions tome about the fact that his variability the government isthreaten the peace of the world was that he talked about solvingessential strategic and limitation treaty was the most importantthing that faces nation if we are to preserve a piece of the worldthan that information from the national securitycouncil relating to the american position of salt

i've been in the possession of the russians before a particularlady and it was in in that context he expressed a very graveconcern about not only saw but about his ability togovern if they could not maintain the confidentiality of the white house seesthis as an example many meeting or the roundup of the kissinger traces that's the onlyonenow and so far thepursuit of the pentagon papers case iswas that something that there was a continualcommunication between the white house nobodywe find work out a staff arrangement between statedefense and justice we were thecourts prosecuting the case but the

art to constituent clients with the state department the defense departmentyou knowmemos were regularlysendover your signature on the pentagon paperscase to both mr weiland jim crowi sent a memo to the attorney generali was prepared for my signature and i signed copies went to themi would not think that unusualyouit says operators but i don't recall standing at the imam was over and ifone was requested i think i probably would have complied

maybe not with revelations of today i matters andthe attorney general has tons of the white housems moyo nogoing there

in californiatodayandwith respect tothe press when itwas on the way tothe airportand that is correctwell that'sinteresting it really isa conversation withthe airport what weresome of your nineteen seventies

and it was on that tripwe're engaged insome of the closerand when you listen to the presentand possible involvement to youthe first information he gave me wasin and i'm not sure it was a bank run but it was a rule next to the meeting room where thepolitical wellin your interview secret interview thatplays out with ms millerwhy you invested to the airport hotelas i recall and seven it was again a slight

pr problem and they didn't go into it any deeperi tried to be white indicatedi think by gesture that he could not discuss the matter further in thepresence of a national committeeman from california who was in the car withthat for just a guess it's not then you went into the hotel yessir and there you indicated you had everything from mr gooden yessir and what kind of reading did you received from himi think i really do you want me to repeat what i saidyesterday welllet me just ask you in everything aboutme but it had been a brutal mr bailey nosir i don't think so yet he discussed the employment in the senateto the extent that

with respect to watergate not with respect toward that hehad discussed with you the intelligenceassignment of mr lilley though he did describe it as an intelligenceand it was right he's incharge of dirty tricks like that in the jury dirty tricks atthat time like advanced let her go now you wereas an inquiring lawyer asked him to amplify that particularphrase or phrases i don't know thatwell it isgetting more detailsthe best of my recollection heindicated that he should have suspected thatmr libby would do something like that

and then you let the hotel and then i went back to thebeverly hills hotel and on this trip do i understand that youwere accompanied by mr mitchellthat's rightand this record and then you on your way to the beverly hills hoteldiscuss anything about the making as i said i'm not surewe may havewe haven't had a lot of my knowledge a talk i had had enough to talk to mr mitchellsince i had the briefing mr mitchell was a perpetual motionhe arrived there itwas well one of the natural things that you justmentioned that's exactly what jenkins yes i said thati'll be very natural except we had we were in a car with a strange

driveri do indeedi understand that maybe you didn't have a greeting on the latteryes my recollection and that it was there that daywe started discussing a public relation to question witnesses who were at firstwrote to you and then try to bringabout some kind of oppressed they know thenews a reference to a verybusy one regular universei wanted to discuss a meeting at the beverly hillshotel and estimates we did discuss their a pr problemthat's not mr mcgrew is referring towhat

specificallywhat specifics i can recall specific says cautionwhat you must though because you were twenty you were subsequently tried to advisethe contents of the pressi have all the facts that mr libby had given theanswer that came for mrlibby you need to tell mewhat was it about itthepopewhy do you call being thedevil you know don't know a grieving

that mean i think i relate all the facts came out mrgiuliani's telephone conversation with mr ladies good morningthat waythe only subject but libby's isaid would not talk about forming only thing he wanted to convey to me who is an urgentdesire for me to return to washingtonyou see a cat isbeing with us sirjames mercer what wasreally unique i don't recallthe ten of the statement was to the effect that

lead blakey and was unauthorizedmr mccourt was the head of a recordassociates he had other clients and thatthe committee did notcondone that type of conduct that certainly had no place inamerican politics than words well what why that statement and you disagreei disagreed with that portion of it that indicated that the court associatesmight have been in the employment of a climb when i was aware of the factthat mr mccourt was devoting his fulltime to the affairs of thecommittee to reelect president and i didn't feel that mr mitchellshould sign is hard to have that statement issued under his namewhen we had facts to the contrarymartin and other nations

we have no plans for this reportwas of such a nature that i didn't feel thatmr mitchell should sign that pressures in the form that was thenso in view of the situation andyou knew mr mitchell was aware of just your opinionthis was a dishonest at that statementi have been and it certainly was an overstatement basedupon the facts were available i felt mr mitchellnow what you any good also that you were appointed counsel on that particular dayfor the cia we have by mr mitchell i think he told me hewanted me to take legal responsibility for the repercussions richard

mourdock of the crp on tora boraworking for the war so i think itslanted toward a plea on behalf of the crp for forty eightepisodes well he knew at that time that he was the council andthen we learned that over his job he was not cancelled thatwhen he was counseling and then also owns of the finance committee where he wascounsel for the finance committee i believe that they're trying to answernowand the department of justice that iswhen the military investigation waslaunched and you knewthat he

was involved in the us where they can win thisvote yesterday is there and is your involvementas responsible to justice youneed to take your as lainey oki'm not going to taketo represent the regimeyou saidyes sir well that does not indicate thatthey had assumed an environmentalist and they are a relationship whichwas inconsistent with the biggest role that the department justice with respect to the usworkplace senator the biggest surprise i ever received in my life was i think i told youwas the disclosure that he made to me after i told him he could pop them in confidence

the piecebut then you know wasn'tyour appointmentinconsistent with they disavow that were going out thatthe ip nine eleven for snow had any complicity in the watergate affairwith mending fences senatori believe i doubt seriously if an attorney for a clientand disavow is plant sayswhen you it's received information in the only basis forknowing that the statement is not true is information he obtained andreducing capacity well the plant going to make mr martinezthat you knew more about the involvement of these people like you though thiscommittee did not i knew more i tried to

tell this committee is candidly and is frankly as i can everything i knowwell did you know any involvementas a result of your conference has witnessed at any involvement on thepart of any reason that the white house no otherthan what i've stated with respect to mr strongrespect mr erlichman was just on the agreement of the minister poland thatmentionsand you inquired him recently as june thepossibility that someone in the retreat who had it in mindthat they would be arrested to embarrass thecommittee to re elect the president you just like that yes i raised that as a

possibility yes i was this the source of some of the stories that are circulated in thepress now is that what his possibilities with respectthroughout the malaysians know i think i learned that in the press the presswas calling in such a job descriptions ofthat at the time are almost comicalnow going to have with the interior of lehman'stomato do that he was involved in that as ayes sir and that said mr hunter also have a prominent partthey're yes sir i use of the group and i presume that include mostof them previous testimony here that that was donewas assigned tovisit denver and that problem has

been waitlisted that he can do this i don't recall atmr root cause we both that he recalls a lot of huge holes in things idon't recall and i recall some things i guess he doesn't my recollection ofwhat he said was we were the ones responsible for getting beat a beardand he also told you that he was a member of the plumbers whoknew were plumbers never came up but i don't well in one contexthe was technically that's true tolling their groupwas had been operating for some considerable period of time and hedid not characterize the group has hundredsand now do you have totalk to you about you knewthat mr libby had been working for the government and subsequently with the crp

you also knew that was going on was also working for the white house about thattime i did not serve andyou knew you were the assistant attorneygeneral and knew that the department of justice was investigating the ittmatter and the white house was also interested so the press dagan syndicatedand then trying to unravel the possible government involvement in theitt of there how did you actually you heard from the sydney actuallyreported all these details do you tell anyone in authorityabout this search involving an apartment in the sky andit is now in the militaryi reported as best i could everything he told me to mr mitchelldid you report it to anyone authority to the department of justice know sir

that you feel that you feel that it was your duty to do so i was aboutin the department of justice is that in those individuali was no i was a private person i was representing the committee and i think thatexplains fully as i can my relationship at thetime i talked to mr libbynow with respect throughout the budget discussions withmr mitchell about the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar budgetplan that you have indicated thatthis discussion took place in the presence of this border wherethere any other discussions about this particular budget presidents must maturefarm mr rouleau must've been for othersand such discussions

have taken place yeahwhen you first learned of the two hundred thousand dollars and it butlevi testified on a positive to thebest of my recollection my recollection changes while i'm here i think it was in theconfrontation that i had witnessed a routine mr mitchell sawit could have been in california that could have been betweenthat time in that meeting but as of right now i would say my bestrecollection is was immediately after we came back and it had to dowith those mr lugar's statement tome that he had dispersed forty thousand dollars tomr libby my responseand mr mitchell's response was to listen to the statement but it'sonly forty thousand of two of the two hundred and fifty thousand but

when they were sad to saytwenty third twenty thirteenand then going back to get me on june twentieth thenews of art was there that out atme he really respected thati stated my best recollection is that the meeting was on the twenty first it couldpossibly have been on the twentieth everyone has guessed it occurred on thetwentieth and were assuming that was the day all i'm assuming it was atwenty four seven now assuming that it was the twentieth asthree other person's of just did you were what landed there said therig her i said i cannot recall a based uponmy records i would write i speculated that it was in the morningon then you on the same day the

sea to greek mr mitchell yes and who accompanied youhonestly <unk> root well that's allan act what did you i don'trecall sir i think that testified that i don't recall exactly when i met withmr liddy the best recollection is that i would have told mrmitchell as soon as i could have obtained access to itit's beenwe do know that mr michel shortly after this meetingi call the president of the united states but what we dont knowi believesenator mitchell's records your meeting point forthe regime which would have coincided with myrecollection that if you made a call to the president after that work

now the heck many timesthe last two years before the special committeewhat your reaction was the story mr mitchell was tellingabout this band that no one in the committee was in all the namesand you say get to the ad councilare in this tent at your personalreaction was angry and the statement being made at that time an estimate iswhat you mean by that when i use those adjectivesand the neighbor would describe my feelingsand amplifyi think those adjectives feelingswhen statement said at the time and what state and the master

mitchell was making senator lawyers are not supposed to makejudgments pass judgments are supposed to represent their clients and wait until a courtmakes that judge it as most lawyers and humani felt i knew what wasgoing out was not theirsand that wasdifficult for mewe've not been asked you to amplify these statements because theymight there are possible answers might shed some light in trying toresolve a contradictory nature of the testimony that has beenaccused of perspective hearwhat it means with huge margin and

the committee has faced with the choice of selecting your testimony is against thetestimony and mentions beings were most of the roomwith respect to some of these matters of substance and that withoutan asian we cannot reach a judgment so we're on an embed an impact with respect tothis testing unless we want to resort tothe way that testimony theorynow i've asked you is this is here is a clip ofquestions which it might be amplifythat you're out and collisions with respect on these mattersand say that you have not given us more detail but i wish to thank you for yourpatience in my questions they cango to try to

be sensitive to prop up a puppetsenators recess for a lunch break we're going to pause in a videotaped plea that thehearings public television's coverage of the senate hearings will continue after red crustaceanidentification on average coverage of these hearings is provided as a publicservice by the member stations of pbs a public broadcasting servicefbfbfb