The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Philip Lacovara Resignation

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. There have been a number of developments over the weekend and today in the continuing story of Korean influence peddling and alleged bribery on Capitol Hill. On Friday the Special Counsel to the House Ethics Committee, Philip Lacovara, suddenly resigned after a running battle with the chairman, Democratic Congressman John Flynt of Georgia. On Sunday Common Cause, the citizens` lobby in Washington, demanded Flynt`s resignation, saying he was incapable of leading the investigation into how many Congressmen took bribes or favors from the South Koreans.

This afternoon President Carter rejected renewed calls for a special prosecutor to take over the parallel investigation in the Justice Department. In a letter to the Republican Congressional leadership the President said, "appointment of a special prosecutor would be inappropriate" and would impede the "exceedingly thorough investigation" now being carried out by Attorney General Griffin Bell.

Tonight, an up-to-date look at what some Republicans have claimed could be a bigger cover-up than Watergate. Jim Lehrer is on vacation, and sitting in for him in Washington is Linda Wertheimer of National Public Radio. Linda?

LINDA WERTHEIMER: Robin, in Washington the Lacovara resignation has touched off a chain of events. The leaders of the House, Speaker Tip O`Neill of Massachusetts and Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas angrily denied an ABC report that they were involved in the influence buying scandal. Congressman Jim Wright said if the unnamed source of the story were revealed, "I will tell him to his face he is a categorical liar." The chairman of the House Ethics Committee, John Flynt, said in his home state of Georgia that he has no intention of resigning his post. "I`m sixty-two years old and have never run from a fight," he said. "I don`t intend to tuck my tail and run now."

But on the floor of the House today freshman Democrat Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania stopped just short of calling for Flynt`s ouster. In a speech to the House he said, "Mr. Lacovara`s departure raises new doubt about the committee`s ability, let alone willingness, to pursue the investigation in a no-holds-barred way." He went on, "The weekend`s events raise more serious questions about whether the current leaders of the House ethics panel can meet the task before it."

Congressman Kostmayer, you met with the Speaker of the House today, with some of the other freshman members of the Congress. What went on at that meeting with Tip O`Neill?

Rep. PETER KOSTMAYER: We made some proposals to the Speaker to improve the quality of this investigation and the Speaker made some proposals to us, and many of them were coincidental, they were alike.

And I think the Speaker was very sensitive and I think he`s aware of the problems which are involved here. Essentially what we said to him is that Mr. Lacovara`s replacement must not be subject to any harassment by the chairman of this committee. In other words, Mr. Flynt should not be permitted to fire the new special counsel to the committee, he should be subject only to termination by the full House of Representatives.

WERTHEIMER: So you think that it will be possible to go ahead with the House Ethics Committee?

KOSTMAYER: Well, we made this proposal to the Speaker and he made some to us, and he said to us this afternoon that he would speak with Chairman Flynt and find out his reaction to these series of proposals.

I think we have to wait and see what the chairman says, tonight or early tomorrow, before we can make any judgment about the future success of the investigation.

WERTHEIMER: You went into that meeting having made a speech, which I just mentioned, in which you came very close to calling for Flynt`s resignation. Can the investigation go on with Flynt? Would it make a difference if Flynt stepped down?

KOSTMAYER: I think the investigation would improve if Mr. Flynt were to resign. I think, however, that we must give him first the opportunity to respond to the proposals which a number of colleagues and myself made to the Speaker of the House this afternoon.

WERTHEIMER: Who are the colleagues who went in with you? Who did you go in representing?

KOSTMAYER: There were half a dozen of us, several members from the sophomore class, those people elected in `74, and my colleagues who were elected with me last year -- Congressman Panetta from California, Congressman Gephardt from Missouri, Congressman Pattison from New York, Congressman Moffett from Connecticut.

WERTHEIMER: What are the concerns of those people? They`re all, as you say, new members of the House.

KOSTMAYER: I think that our greatest concern is the public perception of this investigation. We`ve now stopped talking about the initial acts of alleged wrongdoing and are now talking about the con duct of the committee. And here we have almost a carbon copy of what happened in some of the early Watergate activities. The special prosecutor, or the special counsel, has been fired, the committee chairman is stonewalling, the younger members of Congress are upset and dismayed, and I think the American people are, too, and I think we have to do everything in our power to convince them that we are serious about getting to the bottom of this investigation. And I don`t think, frankly, that anything Mr. Flynt has done so far -- or very little - has done anything to inspire confidence in the Congress or in the American people.

WERTHEIMER: If you take up one of the proposals that you and the Speaker discussed today -- say, for example, a special counsel who had the independence that you speak of, who could not be fired -- the analogy is really to Archie Cox, isn`t it? He`s inside the beast, inside the executive branch, as Archie Cox was.

KOSTMAYER: It would have to be someone of Mr. Cox`s caliber. His name was mentioned along with several others`. It would have to be someone of his caliber who is beyond reproach and who, I think, would inspire confidence in the House and in the country.

WERTHEIMER: Robin?

MacNEIL: Before he resigned as Special Counsel to the Ethics Committee Philip Lacovara had criticized Chairman Flynt for failing to press the investigation vigorously and for holding meetings too infrequently. He resigned after Flynt publicly accused Lacovara, one of the counsels to the Watergate prosecutors, of temper tantrums and ego trips, and demanded an audit of his legal bills to the committee. Lacovara is in Europe on vacation, and not talking. Nor are most members of the Ethics Committee today; it has been split by the Lacovara controversy. Three members say they will not accept the resignation because it will undermine the committee. None of the other nine others, including Chairman Flynt himself, accepted our invitation to appear tonight. One of the three members supporting Lacovara is Republican Congressman Bruce Caputo of New York. Ten days ago Mr. Caputo said he wanted the committee to seek access to the Nixon tapes because he believed that both the former President and Henry Kissinger knew about the Korean attempts to influence Congress.

Congressman Caputo, what does Mr. Lacovara`s resignation do to the committee, in your opinion?

Rep. BRUCE CAPUTO: I think it`s a serious blow for the committee. It`s a clear victory for those members of Congress that have taken illegal payments from the Korean operatives. I think Mr. Lacovara was driven from office by the carping criticism of the chairman, by the failure of the committee to do rudimentary things, like meet on a regular basis. We went for a six-week interval without a single meeting. During that period of time Mr. Lacovara and his staff was repeatedly requesting that we meet to consider subpoenas they thought necessary to make the investigation go forward. They had worked an agreement with the CIA under which the agency was going to provide us necessary information. But after that offer by the CIA was made, we didn`t meet for several weeks, so that we could neither reject nor modify that proposal, and that`s most unusual for the CIA to volunteer to provide us information and for us not to even react.

MacNEIL: You are going, I believe, to refuse to accept Mr. Lacovara`s resignation, is that so?

CAPUTO: Yes, that`s right.

MacNEIL: And am I right that there are two other members of the committee who agree with you on that?

CAPUTO: I know of at least two. I think there are probably going to be several more. In my judgment, if you read carefully what Mr. Lacovara said when he resigned, he resigned because he felt he`d lost the confidence of his client, which is the traditional reason for lawyers to end their relationship with a client. Now, I don`t believe he has lost the confidence of the committee. Evidently he has lost the confidence of Mr. Flynt, but he does not represent the client. The client is the committee, and I believe we can show Mr. Lacovara that he has the support of his client, and maybe he will reconsider. Perhaps some other changes will be necessary; maybe an agreement that we change the rule of the committee that now provides we meet at least monthly to a rule that says we meet at least weekly. Maybe we`ll have to sign a stronger agreement with the CIA, maybe we`ll have to change the leadership of the committee. But I believe there are conditions under which Mr. Lacovara might well agree to come back.

MacNEIL: I see. Congressman, you`ve been a member of the committee, you`ve sat in on all the sessions that there have been. How do you explain Chairman Flynt`s conduct of this investigation so far?

CAPUTO: It`s difficult to describe another person`s motives. I have written him on several occasions with specific suggestions about how to proceed more rapidly, more rudimentary things like meeting more frequently, I`ve encouraged him to call a meeting in which we could consider signing that agreement with the CIA well before we did. I don`t know what drove him to do what he did, but I know the effect of it. The effect of it has been to reduce the scope of our investigation, to slow the pace of our investigation; it clearly has had the effect of a cover-up. Now, I don`t know what his motive might have been. I think you`d have to ask him that. But I know the result has been that we have not had a thorough and fair investigation to date.

MacNEIL: William Sapphire, the New York Times columnist, wrote recently that Flynt is the man through whom Speaker O`Neill slows down the investigation. Is that how you see it, Congressman?

CAPUTO: I asked the administrative assistant to the Speaker and I asked the staff director of the committee whether there had been any dialogue between the Speaker`s office and our committee, and both men denied that. I can only go by what they told me. I don`t know that there is any direct pressure from the Speaker`s office on the committee chairman or its staff to do or not do anything.I do know we have gone at a pace that has to be described as dilatory. We have not had a thorough investigation, but I can`t say for certain that that came or did not come from the Speaker`s office.

MacNEIL: The New York Times has reported that the committee now has evidence that at least 115 Congressmen or former Congressmen are involved in some way. Is that correct?

CAPUTO: I would choose not to reveal any committee evidence, and that question comes awful close to being required to reveal evidence to answer it. But I will say this: I feel very comfortable in saying that this problem is widespread, that it reaches into both parties, into every geographic section of the country as represented by members of Congress, that it is a serious and pervasive problem that has to be discovered and cured, and those kinds of numbers are not altogether out of line.

MacNEIL: Let me bring Congressman Kostmayer back in on this. Congressman, I think you agree with Congressman Caputo the committee has been dragging its feet, in your opinion?

KOSTMAYER: Yes, I do agree with that.

MacNEIL: You`re a member of the other party, of the leadership party. What do you believe is the motive for that?

KOSTMAYER: I think that it really is an institutional problem. I think that Congress, perhaps, certainly in this instance, where 115 of our members have been at least suggested in the papers to be involved, is perhaps incapable of really investigating itself, and I think probably the people feel the same way. I just think it`s really an institutional crisis, and they`re simply not able to do so.

MacNEIL: How intimately is the leadership, in your view, involved in the work of the committee? Congressman Caputo said he didn`t know whether there`d been contact or not. What is your view?

KOSTMAYER: That was one of the problems which the Speaker addressed himself to this afternoon, and he assured us that he had not been in contact with Chairman Flynt at all.

MacNEIL: I see. Would the committee, Congressman Caputo, prefer, do you think, from what you gather of the committee`s business -- would a majority on the committee prefer that the Justice Department finish its investigation first, ask any indictments that it was seeking and have that part of it finished before the committee had to resolve this for itself?

CAPUTO: No, I don`t believe that would be the preference of the committee. The Justice Department has jurisdiction over criminal matters.

MacNEIL: Precisely.

CAPUTO: We in the House Ethics Committee have a very different jurisdiction. Only the House can penalize its own members. That is, only the House can reprimand, censure or expel members. The Justice Department cannot do that. We have a separate constitutional responsibility, we have to follow in parallel; having the Justice Department move forward while we do nothing is not consistent with what the Constitution says and not consistent with what I perceive to be the preference of the committee, so that I think the committee has a duty to go forward now with its responsibilities.

MacNEIL: And without regard to what the Justice Department is doing.

CAPUTO: Well, we can work in tandem. I`ve been insistent on the Justice Department providing that which they can provide us. They don`t want to pollute their own criminal investigation by producing prejudicial pretrial publicity, but within that constraint I think they can provide us documents that we could use without damaging what they`re doing, and we can work in tandem.

MacNEIL: You`ve been anxious to secure the Nixon tapes because you were quoted as saying that you believed that both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger knew of this. Have you had any success in that yet? Has the committee agreed to seek those tapes?

CAPUTO: No, I haven`t had success at that. In fact, I`ve failed at far less ambitious things than that. But I do believe that there is growing evidence that former Ambassador Habib, who represented us in Seoul, Secretary of Defense Mr. Laird expressed their concern to the White House about growing evidence that the Koreans were improperly trying to influence members of the American Congress, and that those representations were made at the time the tapes were running at Camp David and in the Oval Office and the Executive Office building. And quite likely some very strong evidence is on those tapes. And we ought to obtain. those segments of the tapes that would be useful to our investigation.

MacNEIL: Do you have any sense, either of you Congressmen, of the imminence of the Justice Department`s climax to this case? When are they going to reveal their hand and seek indictments -- do you have any sense of when it`s going to come to a head?

CAPUTO: Senator Baker made a copy available to me of a letter he received today from President Carter in which President Carter described how the Justice Department has conducted several hundred interviews; fifty of them have been before a grand jury which has been meeting twice a week for several months now. They have what was described as thousands of documents from over a hundred different sources, indicating that in the President`s view the Justice Department has done a thorough job. I must say, that`s quite inconsistent with my own search for evidence. The controller of the Pacific Development, Incorporated organization right here in Washington that was the headquarters of the Park business operation, had not been interviewed by Justice a few months ago. They didn`t know where he was, and my small staff, none of whom are experienced investigators, found them ourselves. It wasn`t difficult to do. And so I am reluctant to say that Justice is doing a thorough job, but I am prepared to accept the judgment of the President of the United States and to consider that they`re going as fast as is necessary. I think there are lots of things that could be done to supplement what Justice is doing, and I know my colleague here has very strong feelings, so why don`t I let him take it from here?

MacNEIL: Well, we were going to come into the special prosecutor business a bit later. Can I just ask you for the moment, Congressman Kostmayer, do you believe this is a completely bipartisan issue at the moment now among younger Congressmen like yourselves?

KOSTMAYER: I think it`s becoming much more bipartisan with each passing day. I think that Republicans and Democrats alike are particularly concerned that the investigation be moved ahead as quickly as possible and that those who are guilty be punished and that those who are innocent be vindicated.

MacNEIL: I see. Thank you. Linda?

WERTHEIMER: After all that has happened I think one of the things that we have to ask is really can the House do what you just said it should do: vindicate the innocent and identify the guilty? Can a way be found for the House to look inward that will have public confidence?

KOSTMAYER: I`m not sure that it can, and I know the President wrote today to the Republican leadership and said that he felt that Congress should have the opportunity to vindicate itself, because this is important as far as restoring confidence in the Congress is concerned. And I think that`s a noble gesture, and I think the President has gone a long way toward restoring confidence in the executive. But I`m not sure that the Congress has reached that point as far as keeping its own houses in order -- yet.

WERTHEIMER: You serve on the House Ethics Committee, Congressman Caputo. Now, the Ethics Committee was created to take care of just this kind of problem, and you`ve been inside it for all these months. Do you see a way that the House can clean its own house?

CAPUTO: I think that`s a really important question. It`s a basic constitutional question. One thing to understand is, never before has a `House Ethics Committee dealt with a problem of this kind. Heretofore we had always identified a single individual member of the House and made a rather specific allegation against that member, so there was no question about the possible involvement of members of the committee itself. There`s no question about the accusation spreading to several members, indeed, to a hundred members of the House. This is the first time this kind of general allegation has been reviewed by the Ethics Committee. So if the machinery might have worked today, it would be a coincidence if the same machinery could work from here forward on this particular investigation.

I think there`s no question that we have the capacity; we could get the information out of the CIA we need and out of the NSA and out of the Justice Department. We could get the White House tapes, we could meet weekly, we could issue the requisite subpoenas and Fifth Amendment treatments and immunities.It`s just a question of whether we have the will; and that remains to be seen. Clearly, we have not today shown the requisite drive to have a thorough and fair investigation. There`s no doubt about the capacity, it`s just a question of whether we`re willing to.

WERTHEIMER: If you were willing to, what could you do to those people who are found to have behaved in some way that the House considers reprehensible, either a violation of law or violation of the rules? What kinds of sanctions does the committee have at its disposal to satisfy the public that justice has been served?

CAPUTO: Well, the Constitution is quite clear about that. The House has essentially an unlimited array of penalties. Those that have been used in the past range from expulsion -- meaning the member leaves the House of Representatives and a new election is held to censures to reprimands to fines to suspensions of privileges, like suspending a member`s right to vote -- to things of that kind. These sanctions extend to past members. We can fashion a penalty consistent with our own sense of the degree of guilt and the importance of the guilt, and the Constitution leaves that to us. And over the years several different penalties have been devised by the House.

WERTHEIMER: Has the House ever expelled anyone who was a sitting member of Congress? How many times has that happened after the election and the swearing in?

CAPUTO: During the Civil War it happened rather regularly, where the Southern Congressmen were expelled as a matter of course. Since then, it`s been rare -- under ten times. The most recent attempt to expel was the Adam Clayton Powell case, and he was not actually expelled, they refused to sit him; and that was found improper.

WERTHEIMER: Now, the illegalities that may or may not have happened are one thing, and something which the Justice Department and the Ethics Committee have been dealing with, but what about the question of legal but questionable campaign contributions, legal but questionable gifts, trips, tips, the kind of largesse that the Koreans are rumored to have been dispensing? How does the House see to it that, dealing with that kind of thing, that that somehow does not slip away from this investigation?

KOSTMAYER: I think that`s where we have to make a distinction between violations of the House rules -- and that investigation should be conducted by the House Ethics Committee -- and on the other hand, violation of the criminal statutes of the country. So there are two different distinctions, really two different investigations which are involved. I think probably that the House investigation of its own ethics is less arbitrary than a statutory investigation, where people have either broken the law or not. The House can punish members for violating its own rules while at the same time they may not have actually violated criminal statutes.

CAPUTO: Linda, could I jump in on that one, because I have strong feelings about that issue. The Constitution and the rules of the House are quite clear on the impropriety oœ a member of Congress accepting an all-expenses- paid to a foreign country where that trip is paid for not by the United States government and not by the member but by a foreign government or by an institution or a person with interest in legislation before the Congress. That`s a clear violation; there`s no doubt about that.

The difficulty is that dozens and dozens of members of the House have done precisely that, and it`s a West Point problem. What do you do when half the junior class of upstanding young men that everybody would like have committed a violation? Navy had the same problem; they didn`t do much. The military academy did penalize every person. I think you want to be lenient with minor indiscretions, but you don`t want to ignore them. Where there are a lot of indiscretions you ought to point it out, maybe just a mere reprimand; but you don`t want to ignore them.

WERTHEIMER: What about the other side of the coin: those people who didn`t do anything? The Congress is in very low repute now because of what a few people or perhaps as many as a hundred people have done. How do you clear the innocent it the Congress itself is not credible?

CAPUTO: I think those people who didn`t do anything obviously have nothing to worry about, and that`s the distinction which the Congress and perhaps the special prosecutor, if we get him, will have to make.

WERTHEIMER: Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes, let`s go back to the special prosecutor. Congressman Kostmayer, you want a special prosecutor. Why?

KOSTMAYER: I think for two reasons: number one, I think only a special prosecutor can really focus in on the problem, unlike the House committee and unlike the current Department of Justice investigation.

I think only a special prosecutor can really convince the American people that we`re serious about solving the problem, by bringing the kind of attention and the kind of focus to the investigation which it requires.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Congressman Caputo, that the Justice Department investigation needs a special prosecutor?

CAPUTO: I less well advised on what Justice has done and what they need to do than I am on the Ethics Committee. I do think that there are some things we could expect from a special prosecutor that we`re not now getting. First is a sense of confidence by the American public that someone of unquestioned integrity is looking into these matters. Secondly...

MacNEIL: Isn`t the Attorney General, Griffin Bell, a man of unquestioned integrity, Congressman?

CAPUTO: Well, evidently not. I`ve seen polls suggesting that this investigation is not held in high repute by the American public. I don`t think it`s a question of thinking he`s guilty of wrongdoing, but he may be preoccupied with other things. He has antitrust matters, general criminal problems, a variety of environmental problems that he has got to confront. Some kind of focus might be useful.

KOSTMAYER: Perhaps it should be taken out of the regular routine or the regular course of events of the other investigations of the Department, somehow set aside.

MacNEIL: How do you restore confidence to the first Watergate Department of Justice if you don`t let them get on and handle an exceedingly delicate political matter like this?

CAPUTO: That`s an important question, but they`ve had two years and produced nothing in the face of what appears to be overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. I think they`ve had their chance to settle this one. Now, there has been a change in the administration, and maybe we`re being unfair by giving them only six months, but it`s my inclination that there are higher stakes involved here than the reputation of one Attorney General, and furthermore, I don`t think a special prosecutor necessarily means anybody thinks less of the Attorney General. We can have a high reputation for the Attorney General and a high reputation for the special prosecutor. I don`t think we have to pick and choose.

MacNEIL: Congressman Kostmayer, the President`s statement today described Mr. Bell`s investigation as an "exceedingly thorough" one. Do you have any reason to believe that it isn`t?

KOSTMAYER: Several months ago Attorney General Bell -- and I have a good deal of respect for him -- but several months ago he said that -- and this was back in April -- that he thought it was time the Department of Justice wound that investigation up and brought it to a speedy conclusion. I wrote to him, I asked fifty of my colleagues to join me in writing to him, and he responded to me, number one, not to believe everything that we read in the newspaper, and number two, that he had no intention of winding that investigation up until it had been completed in a thorough manner. So I think that even that letter had some influence on it.

MacNEIL: Linda, did you want to ask a question?

WERTHEIMER: Yes. The thing that I was curious about is, suppose if, as we discussed, a good many of the things that have happened were not illegal but merely improper or violations of the rules. You have a special prosecutor investigating, he makes a few indictments but not very many. The people have heard that hundreds are involved.

KOSTMAYER:I think, again, that you make a distinction between transgressions of House rules and violations of actual criminal statutes. I spoke to a member of Congress last week who informed me that he had been searching his campaign records and found that he had received a $100 contribution and the check had been signed "T. Park." I`m not sure that he is liable. I think there should be some responsibility and a sense of fairness. Any member of Congress is vulnerable in that area, so I think we make a distinction between judgment, violation of the House rules and outright violation of the criminal statutes of the country.

MacNEIL: Could we just, in conclusion, gentlemen, get some sense of proportion on this? A number of people, former Governor John Connally, a Republican, among them, have said that this could end up as the biggest cover-up of the century, bigger in proportion than Watergate. Congressman Caputo, do you have any sense that we are facing a scandal of those proportions?

CAPUTO: Well, I`m not an expert on Watergate, but if what you`re implying is that there was wrongdoing in high places, defined as violations of rules of the House and constitutional provisions that may not go detected and may not go penalized, I think that it`s quite likely that there will be dozens of persons who have committed acts which under the rules -- that I didn`t write -- are penalizable that might not get any penalty at all, and that would seem to me to lead to an affirmative answer to your question about a large-scale cover-up.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Congressman Kostmayer? Is it of that scale?

KOSTMAYER: I think that it will become of that scale if Chairman Flynt continues to be as unresponsive as he has been in the past. I think it`s not too late to do something about it, but if we continue to permit him to act in the way in which he has I think it will become a problem.

MacNEIL: And are all the freshman Congressmen as exercised as you two gentlemen are about it?

CAPUTO: We`re going to meet tomorrow, Republicans and Democrats alike. I`m the only freshman on the Ethics Committee, and I`m going to speak about what I think ought to be done on the Ethics Committee. May be you`ll be speaking about the special prosecutor situation. Yes, I think there`s growing concern by the freshmen that we were elected in kind of a reform atmosphere and we`re going to now be old-timers, not newcomers and we don`t want to come back to a Congress and campaign in this kind of atmosphere.

KOSTMAYER: I agree with that. If we don`t do it, I don`t know who will.

MacNEIL: Thank you, Congressmen, very much, both of you; and good night, Linda. That`s all for tonight. Linda and I will be back tomorrow night, and other news permitting, we`ll look at the attempts to make no-fault car insurance apply to all states. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.