Washington Straight Talk; Albert

Carl Albert, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma. Tonight, on Washington Strait Talk, House Speaker Carl Albert, the man who would preside over any vote of impeachment of the President that might come before the House of Representatives. Answers questions put to him by NPAC correspondent Paul Duke. Mr. Speaker, the big question first, what are the chances that the House will impeach President Nixon? Well, my frank answer is that I do not know. I don't think anybody can answer that question until the proceedings have continued further in the Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Speaker, a year ago, you and various other leaders in Congress were saying that impeachment was unthinkable.

Now, of course, it has become quite thinkable. Is there a genuine climate for impeachment in the House? Well, Paul, it's difficult to say whether there's a climate or there isn't a climate. My own judgment on this matter is that there should not be a climate one way or another. There should be a genuine effort made to get it all the facts. And when the facts are in, to judge them, and to judge the actions of the House on the basis of the results of the hearings and investigation which the Committee on the Judiciary is making. I know of no other way to appraise the situation. Some people are saying there already are enough votes in the House to impeach the President. What is your assessment? Well, I haven't taken a poll of the members.

And I recognize two things. First of all, that impeachment is very serious business, particularly impeachment of the President of the United States. And as you well know, and as you've almost put it in your opening statement, I resisted efforts to get into this thing on the basis of the first rumors and first media reports that came out because I did not want to start a traumatic experience unless we had absolute necessity for doing so. The second thing, it seems to me that climate should, is that climate should not have anything to do with it. That this should be something based upon the facts and the seriousness of the facts which are brought out by the Committee on the Judiciary. Let me approach this slightly differently, Mr. Speaker. Would you say that there is now a greater chance for the President to be impeached than there was say three months ago or six months ago? Well, let me put it this way. I don't know about the chance, and I still hold what I've just said.

I do think that more members today feel that the President has lost ground in the last two or three months than had felt that way through the entire previous eight or nine months. Do you feel this way? I don't have a personal, I have come to no personal conclusion on this matter, and I don't intend to. After all, I appointed a Committee to do this job. I referred this matter to the Committee on Judiciary. The Committee was already set up. I could have asked the House to set up a select Committee. Well, I made the decision to send it to the Judiciary Committee, and I'm not going to prejudge that Committee. I don't think I should. Secondly, I'm going to preside if there are proceedings on this matter over the proceedings, and I want to preside as speakers always do when they sit in the chair, and that is with absolute impartiality. And I do not think that prejudgments on my part would be conducive to that kind of hearings.

Well, if as you suggest, Mr. Speaker, the President has indeed lost ground in the House to what do you attribute this? Well, I think there is a feeling among a number of members that the President has probably, or some think certainly, unfairly, attacked the Committee, which has given a job when the Committee hasn't really given him any occasion to do this. And such statements as they might want to take a U-Haul and go down to the White House and carry back all the documents they can find, really does not represent anything that I have seen done or heard about as far as the Committee is concerned. It seems to me that that statement, by itself, is a wild, offensive maneuver on the part of the President, and almost beneath the dignity of the Office of the President of the United States, and I'm surprised that the President would say a thing like that. Then I take it you agree with the Assistant Democratic Leader of the Senate, Robert Bird, when he says that the President has been deliberately distorting the truth by saying that he is fully cooperating with the House Judiciary Committee.

Well, if he's fully cooperating, I haven't been able to find it out. Now, I think we ought to keep in mind certain things. First of all, the impeachment process, the process of initiating proceedings against the President of the United States belongs to the House of Representatives. It doesn't belong to the President. The President has no authority, whatever, to determine what issues the House will consider, what legal lines the House will draw, no court has any right or power to review such decisions by the House of Representatives. The first and final constitutional authority is in the House, and the only appeal is to the public. The public may dislike what the Congress does or what the President does, but there will be another election.

There will be one in 74 and there will be one in 76. That is when the issue of final appeal will be settled. Will you feel this tactic of the President in attacking the Committee is damaging the President's course? Yes, it is damaging the atmosphere in which he operates. In the House of Representatives, I do not think that it will make any difference in the end. Regardless of what he says or how he acts in what the judgment of the House will be, I have confidence that the House will base its judgment upon the evidence. But I do think it does have some effect upon the feeling of the majority of the members of the House toward the President. I think the President would be well advised to cooperate because there is nothing that can be done. There is nothing that can be done when one of the big issues is cover-up. There is nothing that can be done to get rid of that issue when so many people think that the President still wants to withhold something else.

He is defeating his own purpose, as I see it. I believe if the President should have come out in the very first instance and had his staff find everything that had anything to do with the things the Committee or the Courts were talking about and said here it is, I think it would have been over by now. Do you think the President should turn over whatever documents and tapes the Committee wishes to receive? First of all, I think the Committee should specify the documents and tapes that it needs. I think they should be relevant. I don't think the Committee should go down there and ask the President for some document that has something to do with something that isn't remotely connected with anything. But I do think that the Committee is entitled to all the evidence that the White House has, which relates to any of the issues that have been raised by these various charges and resolutions of impeachment.

Isn't it true, though, Mr. Speaker, that the White House has turned over an unprecedented number of documents and material to the Committee and shouldn't the Committee digest what it has before it demands more material? As far as I know, I think the Committee is doing that and the Committee has assured me that it was going to ask only for relevant data. Beyond that, I can't say anything. Mr. Speaker, there is a conflict also involving the President's lawyer, Mr. St. Clair, and what part he should play in the Judiciary Committee's proceedings. Do you feel that he should play a prominent role, that he should be there as the Representative of the President? Well, the only way I can answer that is this. I have referred this to the Committee and I will back the Committee's judgment on that issue.

Normally, I would think that the role of the White House's attorney should be very limited through the House proceedings because there's no trial here. This is not an adversary proceeding as I envision it, and I have tried, and I don't think anybody can contradict this. On the basis of anything I've said publicly or privately, I have tried to keep the House from making this and certainly myself from making this an adversary operation where we're going to bang the President or have the President bang us. I'm not sure that the President anymore is keeping this a non-adversary operation. Now, if the President is trying to win this and the President has served in the House, if the President is trying to have the House or get the House not to vote for impeachment proceedings by going out and making speeches and charges in political audiences or some of my political audiences. I think he's making a mistake.

What do you think the President should do then? Well, I think the President should cooperate. I think the President should persist in his statements that he made earlier that he didn't think he'd done anything that was wrong. I see no reason why he shouldn't do that. But to go out and attack the Committee seems to me to be an effort, and whether it's designededly this so or not, to change this from an investigation to an adversary operation where there will be a public debate between the Committee or representatives of Congress and the President of the United States. And this, as I see it, has already injured the President's psalm in the feelings and the reactions that members of the House have toward him and what I've heard them say about this. Now, if the Committee does something that is extremely bad, that's another matter. But we have seen nothing from my standpoint in the Committee, from the standpoint of the actions of the whole Committee, that would indicate anything but that they are trying to do this job in a judicial manner and that they are very well aware of the importance of the job.

I don't think anybody wants to go out with the preconceived idea of impeaching a President of the United States. I think most Americans would prefer that we didn't have this situation on our hands, but it's here. And you are a member of the media, and the media is all over the country, and we have free speech in this country and free press. You're not going to put an issue of this kind to rest by sweeping under the rug, either in the House Committee on the Judiciary or in the House itself or in the White House, anything that's relative to a full disclosure of the facts. Mr. Speaker, as you know, there are two views of impeachment. One is a rather broad view that a President can be impeached for misconduct, which damages the Office of the Presidency.

And then there's the narrow view, which says the President can only be impeached if he has committed a major crime, a felony, which view do you hold to? Well, I think something in between is probably the correct answer, although I haven't tried to define in my own mind. If I should publicly, I might impair the ability of the committee, or the freedom, or make the committee feel that it didn't have the freedom to draw its own conclusions. I have not heard anybody say that it should be a felony, because the Constitution itself says high crimes and misdemeanors and whatnot. An indictable crime. A misdemeanor is not a felony, whether it should be an indictable crime or not.

A crime in any legal jurisdiction is what the jurisdiction holds it to be. Now, in any civilized country, it should be something very serious. And I think that is true here. But what is a crime in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, or the state courts, or the courts of another country, may be one thing. What is a crime within the jurisdiction of the House's authority to issue bills of impeachment, or articles of impeachment, may be something else. And if it is something else, the committee should specify it. Generally speaking, you would hold to the broad view. That would be correct. I would think so, yes. Just generally speaking, and I want to keep that very general. Mr. Speaker, some people suggest that if you have the impeachment process, if you go ahead, that this would tear the country apart.

Well, having the impeachment process wouldn't tear the country apart, I don't believe that. I have always thought that impeachment is very serious business. I think impeaching a president without sufficient grounds would tear the country apart. But I think the failure to impeach, if the grounds are sufficient, would also do damage to the country. But the country, and the offices of the country, the constitutional offices of the country, are larger than specific occupants. In my opinion, we have lost great presidents right in the middle of their terms. It would not be a very pleasant experience. But we could survive. Oh, of course, we could survive. Mr. Speaker, Senator Buckley, Congressman Mills, the majority leader of Mr. O'Neill, have all suggested that the president should resign for the good of the country. How do you feel about that?

Well, I have said this from the beginning. I say it again that I would have to think a long time about this matter before I would recommend to the president. The president of the United States, and he resigned. I do not believe we have reached the point where I should say, Mr. President, you should step down. Now, the president has said to me that he did not intend to resign. I would think that the president would feel that he would know when he should resign. Now, I am not yet ready to say that the president should resign. Do you agree with Senator Buckley when he says the president has lost his moral credibility? Well, I do not agree with that. I think a better way to put it is that his credibility has been damaged. But not completely destroyed.

I do not think it can be completely destroyed until the facts are out. I think the president has hurt his credibility by relying upon his apparent concern with the office of the presidency. And it is authority to operate secretly when the whole issue is credibility. I think the president has hurt his credibility with the American people. Because when people are waiting to find out what the truth is, the sooner the president gives the impression that he is trying to get the truth out, and not trying to rely on some vague notion about what presidential immunity is, but the prerogatives of the office are. The sooner he does that, the faster he is going to get broader support. It seems to me among the people of this country.

And I can say that there is one who has traveled a lot around this country, who has had a lot of mail. I suppose my office is one of the focal points of mail in the country, that the country is divided on this issue already. There is a minority, which seems to be wanting to throw the president out today if he doesn't resign. There seems to be a minority, who want the president left alone no matter what he's done. But the vast majority of the American people are still pondering this subject. They're wanting it put to rest, they're wanting it settled, but they have that basic judgment, which is always characterized by people at judicial temperament, which says let's wait till the facts are in. And I think that represents the majority of the people of the United States.

Well, if the facts do come in, and there is a recommendation from the Judiciary Committee for Impeachment, I think many people would like to know, how will the House proceed? What will your role be? How long would it take on the House floor? Well, my role, of course, will be presiding officer. The recommendations of the committee will be debated. They will be presented by the members of the committee. If there are minority views, they will be presented by the members of the minority. Ample time will be given to discuss the issues completely and thoroughly. And no time will be given, so far as I'm concerned, just for long drawn out, haranging procedures. But every item, and it will be thoroughly discussed, and every member will be given an opportunity to have his say.

So it will take some time to do it, but I can't put a time frame around it now. I don't know how many articles there will be if there are any. I could envision a situation where there might not be any, where there might not be any recommendation. And in that case, I would suppose, and I've been told by members that they would call up a resolution, and in that case, there would probably be a motion to table if the committee hadn't recommended. It depends on how the committee recommends. If the committee hadn't recommended any articles, they would be it up and down vote. The chances are on a motion to table. So it could be anything from a quick operation to an operation extending over several days. Perhaps a week longer? Well, it might go that long, depending on so many things that have not been defined up to now, or as I know. This would certainly be one of the great historic debates, Mr. Speaker. Yes, it would.

Would you expect it to be televised? Well, we haven't made a decision on that yet. Would you favor televiseding it? I would not have a conclusion to express it this time on that subject, because I would want to discuss it with the committee after the committee is ready to report. Mr. Speaker, you said some time ago that we can never accept again the dogma that the White House knows best in terms of legislation and recommendations to the country. And yet, even though we have gone through the trauma of Watergate now for a year, many people feel that Congress has not stepped in to feel the gap that Congress still is not showing the leadership that it should, and they cite the energy crisis as one example. What is your response to this criticism? Well, of course, that's an easy charge to make. The Congress has passed energy legislation in every field.

We quickly passed one of the major pieces of legislation dealing with energies, and that was the Alaska Pipeline, and we did it against severe opposition. We have passed a number of bills already. We passed one bill, which contained most of the president's recommendations, which was vetoed. The Congress has moved in this field. The president says that you have not acted on 17 bills, which the White House has recommended. Of the 17, which he has recommended, we've acted or are in the process of considering at least 12 of them. Some of them, as a matter of policy, the committees will not take up. But that is a question of judgment. The president isn't all wise on what bills should be taken up in the energy area. The legislative branch is the legislative leader, and we have passed an enormous number of bills.

And one of the bills that we've passed this year was the Anti-War Powers Act, or last year, in this session, this Congress. And we overloaded the president's veto. We said then to the president that the time for executive domination of policy is at an end. Now, there isn't any way just under our constitutional system. There's no way for 535 men or women, all speaking at one time, to take the place of the office at the Constitution, specifically designates as the chief executive office of the nation. And there's just a lot of hogwash about that. There's no way. There never has been a time when a Congress goes out and operates the bureaus. And does the various things that need to be done in the foreign policy at the actual operation level. That's got to be done by the executive.

Otherwise, we've got to change our form of government and go to the British system, where the authority comes out of the Congress. And I think that would be the worst thing that ever happened to us. This government would have fallen long ago under those European systems that used the parliamentary system. And their weaknesses have been shown up so badly in recent years. I believe one of our allies has had a new government every eight months since World War II on the average. What do you think of that? Mr. Speaker, an unprecedented number of old timers are leaving Congress this year. How is that going to affect the House? Well, of course, of those that are leaving, they are all very competent and contributing members of the House. And it is going to be a loss to the House. But there comes a time when members feel that they should leave. They feel that their ability to contribute is not so overriding for the remainder of the years that they have. As to hold them in office longer.

You'll remember that George Washington made his farewell address when I think he was 59 years old or 57 years old or 60. What was his 32 and he was around 60 years old and 67 years old I guess. What about Carl Albert? Well, Carl Albert won't be here after he's 70 years old either. I just don't want to be and I think what I have to offer, I can give before I'm at that age. This country does not depend upon the indispensable man. We have young members coming on who will probably do the job better than we've done it. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you very much for coming here and having this conversation with us tonight. Thank you. From Washington, N. Pack has brought you Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, with N. Pack correspondent Paul Duke. Next week on Washington Straight Talk, Paul Duke talks with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur Mills.

This program has been made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation. This has been a production of Enfact, a division of GWTA. Thank you.