In My Opinion; 14; Wayne Morse

The following program is from NET. The National Educational Television Network. World opinion reacts against us in regard to our bombing in North Vietnam because world opinion knows that we are killing civilians. Of all the congressional critics of the war in Vietnam, the loudest and most persistent is Wayne Lyman Morse, senior senator from Oregon and member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He thinks the war is illegal and immoral. In 1965 his criticism filled 434 pages of the congressional record.

Opposition is no new role for Morse. For 30 years now he has been a maverick, a political crusader in a variety of causes, sometimes almost alone. He pursues his crusades and speaking engagements around the country. He is tangled with five presidents, with a national leadership of both parties, with fellow senators, with news media, with both industry and labor. He is generally a liberal, but it's hard to categorize him or predict his stand on any given issue. Morse is not always against the administration of the day, however. Lyndon Johnson, poking gentle fun at the senator's habit of self-quotation, autographed this picture with the caption, as I said to the president, but then Mr. Johnson added, thanks LBJ. The president has had occasion to thank Wayne Morse for his help in getting education bills through the Congress and for his role in settling an airline strike. Morse's record as a labor mediator stretches back some 30 years.

Born in Wisconsin he became dean of the University of Oregon Law School. He was elected to the Senate in 1944 as a Republican, but quit the party in 1952 and wound up a Democrat. But he will never be a party regular in any party. Last year he supported the successful Senate campaign of Republican Mark Hatfield, who was closer to his Vietnam views than the Democratic nominee. That Democratic candidate, former Congressman Robert Duncan, is still busy in Oregon and made challenge Morse's bid for renomination. A couple of Republicans also have their eyes on the seat. There are reports that Morse is in deep political trouble this time, but there have been similar reports for about 20 years now. But the next half are, we'll be examining the views and career of Senator Wayne Morse. These are the people, the leaders, the newsmakers in a wide variety of activities.

Other views are explored by NET's Paul Niven, the name of the series, in my opinion. Senator, you said often that unless President Johnson changes his foreign policy, he may not be renominated next year. Now, if the policy does not change and if there's an anti-war candidate in opposition to Mr. Johnson, either in the prime razor at the convention, will you support such a candidate? I don't think there's any doubt about the fact that the President is going to be nominated at the Democratic Convention. I hope I'll be in a position where I can support him. That depends on what the position the President takes on foreign policy. Because in my judgment, the Democratic Party has an obligation, not only to the American people, but to history, to change its foreign policy and respect to the war in Asia. If we continue to escalate this war, I think that we're going to leave a heritage to the

American people, of tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of American troops in Asia for some decades to come. And you know, I do not think that we can justify our course of action in Asia. We never should have intervened in the first place. We can't just get up and pull out, but we do have a duty it seems to me to stop the escalating and to insist that other nations under existing treaty obligations move into and force a peace. Well, if the policy does not change, and if there is an anti-war candidate against the President in prime marries or at the convention, will you support such a candidate? Well, that will all depend on who he is and what he really stands for. I don't buy pigs in the poke. Well, suppose that Dr. Martin Luther King were persuaded to run, would you support him against the President? On the basis of the program that he's announced to date, the answer would be no. I want to support a Democrat. I've supported the President before. I hope I can support him again.

I'm not going to dismiss the strong probability that all of us in the Democratic Party will be able to support President Johnson by November 1968, because I'm not going to give up hope. I never give up hope that we're going to change our foreign policy in Asia. And that is the critical issue, pays all the other issues into insignificance. I've heard some student leaders say that they would like to support you as an anti-war candidate. If you were not up for re-election in Oregon as a senator, would you consider running it all? Not at all. I have no illusions about my place in American politics. I have but one desire, and that is to continue to serve in the Senate if the people of my state want to give me that trust again. I think that I have unfinished work to do in the Senate as a senator, and that's why I'm offering myself for re-election on the Democratic ticket. It's suppose the policy continued unchanged, and a large number of opponents of that policy came to you and said, Senator, may we use your name in this or that primary as a symbol

of opposition to the war? The answer would be absolutely no. You see no chance of that. I'm simply telling you that I don't know circumstances, but I run for the presidency or the vice presidency on any ticket. So what do you think of Secretary Rusk's contention that criticism of the war here is going to confuse our enemies and perhaps cause them to continue the war? Well, of course, he's dead wrong, but this is an alibi and a rationalization in the part of Secretary Rusk to cover up the great mistakes he's made in advocating the escalating of the war. We've got to expect those that are advocating the escalating of the war, not only Secretary Rusk, but Secretary McNamara and others, to take that position. But let me say that Secretary Rusk doesn't sit in the Senate of the United States and the other advisors that have my judgment been giving the president a very bad advice. And Paul, let me say at this point of our conversation, I don't question the sincerity of the president.

I have been the slightest doubt about his desires for peace. He wants peace. He wants peace as much as any of us wanted. My difference with the president is his exceedingly bad judgment. And I think that bad judgment is based on bad advice that he gets from the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and others. But what I want to point out is that Secretary of State doesn't sit in the Senate. I do. But I have an obligation under that Constitution. And one of my obligations under that Constitution is to exercise the check of the purse strings that the Constitution and fathers wrote into the Constitution. They provide it. But if the Congress really doesn't agree with a policy of the president, in this instance the Vietnam policy, then they have the power to deny the president, the funds with which to prosecute that policy. That's why you find me pleading with my colleagues in the Senate. If you really mean it out in the cloakrooms, when so many of you tell me that you don't think we should be over there, that we never should have gotten it, all right, deny

him the money. Stop voting for the appropriations bills and he'll have to change his policy. But don't give me the argument. Don't give me the argument that you'd be letting down the boys because the pipelines are full of supplies. It would take some six months before there would be any problem from the standpoint of getting in the supplies, but if the president knows you're not voting the funds, he'll have to fall back on a general ridgway, a general Gavin, a George Cannon, and the others that have been warning us for months and months we ought to stop escalating the war. And the ones that are letting down the boys in South Vietnam are the members of the Congress that are voting the money to kill them. Stop voting the money to kill them and the president will have to stop sending them over and stop escalating the war. You're so far you've not persuaded one of your fellow Senators to vote against appropriations. Of course you're wrong about that, Senator Nelson of Wisconsin voted with me in opposition to the $4.5 billion supplemental appropriation, Senator Greening has voted with me, and of course

a great many of them, you know, get up and make speeches in which they oppose giving the president the blank check that they're giving him, but still vote for it, you'll have to be the judge as to whether or not their votes are squared with their words. Of course I've said so many times, Paula, as you know that the only test of the politician really is whether or not he votes the way he talks. That's the only test. Senator, every public opinion poll is indicated not only that the majority of the people support the war, but that more people in favor escalation than de-escalation. Now when the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee has witnesses, as hearings, and chooses witnesses who are overwhelmingly against the war, isn't this going to convey an unrepresentive impression to people overseas? Well, of course I don't think that's a fair evaluation of our witnesses. We also have a Secretary of Rask. We have a Secretary Macdemarist speaking for the administration. You can find any witnesses in the country more ardent in escalating the war than those

witnesses, or a general Maxwell Taylor. After all, don't forget, we have to see to it that the administration's case is made, and we have to see to it that the case against the administration is made. And I want to say to the everlasting credit of Senator Fulbright of Arkansas, he's given the American people and my judgment a very balanced record in regard to our hearings on Vietnam. But in this year's series of the American commitment, of course the administration didn't come and it could have, it was invited. But the witnesses who did come, Mr. Ryshawar, Mr. Commager, and others, General Gavin, seem to be heavily against the bombing, do you have a heavy against the bombing? Don't forget that Ambassador Raskhawar supported the administration's general prosecution of the war. In fact, quite a few of our so-called China expert witnesses, although they don't like it at all, have testified that they've seen nothing else to be done now, but to go ahead to victory, whatever they mean about that, by that.

The most of the tender of this year's series of the American commitment was dove-like. There were no real hawks, those series of hearings, and that series of hearings. Now, I don't like this. Don't share that evaluation of some of the witnesses that apparently you're characterizing as doves, because I think you take their testimony and time and time again, they advocate that we continue. They also discuss the historic mistakes that we've made, and that's what I think needs to be pointed up. You've got a point of view in this country that all you have to do now is win and get out. The point of view is that it doesn't make any difference how we got in, we're in, how we got in is water over the dam, and we must get out. And of course, that's a basic fallacy. You can't win and get out. I think we can force a surrender. When you get through forcing a surrender on the part of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, you'll have to kill a lot. You'll have to commit many, many more in humanities than we've already been committing.

But I think you can force them to surrender, but you can't get out. For the key administration, couldn't last but a very short period of time without maintaining American bayonets over there to support it. Once you get a surrender, you'll have not peace, but a truce. That's why you hear me pleading so frequently in the Senate and across the country for a multi-lateral negotiating table. Not a bilateral negotiating table. Have you seen anything in the North yet, to me, statements to indicate that they would accept the kind of invitation to muddle lateral talks which you would like to see? Oh, I don't think you'll know until you try it. I don't think you know until you stop the bombing until you make perfectly clear that we're going to stop our infiltration, imagine all this talk on our park that we're not going to stop the bombing as long as the North Vietnamese infiltrate. Of course, they're infiltrating, and so are we. And the infiltration of the United States is so many, many times worse and more in degree

than the North Vietnamese infiltration that outside of the United States, the people in other parts of the world recognize it. The sad thing is that the American people do not fully appreciate the great loss of prestige that we've suffered among the millions of people in other parts of the world, for they know our infiltration, they know of our intervention. And I want to say you can't ignore our historic mistakes. We've got to try to correct them. And that's why I make the plea for a multi-lateral approach. That's why you hear me making the plea for a movement through either a reconvened and expanded Geneva conference or the United Nations. Senator, if we may turn to another subject, Congressional ethics comes up during every session of Congress. Recent events in both the Senate and the House suggest there's more pressure for legislation this year than there has been for some time. Do you expect anything to happen? Well, I hope so.

Of course, you know, Paul, I think it was 1946 that I offered my first full disclosure bill. I've offered it periodically ever since, I've got some more support for it and other people are offering it too. I don't care who offers it. I'll support whether it was the old Paul Douglas Bill or the Herbert Lehman Bill or the Dick Newberger Bill or the Morse Bill or now the Case Bill or the Javis Bill or the Clark Bill. The important thing is there's a strong body of support in the Senate of the United States for a full disclosure bill, which means a full disclosure of a Senator's income, the sources of all of his income, his gifts, and I don't buy the argument that this is an infringement on his privacy. Listen, when we run for public office, we move into a fishbowl. We don't have the rights of privacy that non-political citizens have. We've asked for the job and the voters are entitled to know under a uniform, full public

disclosure bill, the sources of our income, the amounts of our income, and if we did that, now this isn't going to solve the whole problem. It'll only help. There are good many other reforms we need to adopt too, but that's one, what would you think of going further, paying our legislators and our top men in the executive branch enough so that they can meet their obligations and raise their families without any income, outside income, and then forbid them with a severe penalty to have any outside income? Well, let me say that in my judgment, the present pay of senators is adequate if the Senate would be willing to vote itself the expense money that each Senate office needs to conduct Senate business. That's what's needed, and you know, I offer that many times, you can't get anywhere with that, and therefore they leave you no other course, finally, but to vote for some salary increase.

Well, let me give you an example. I'm so glad you asked the question. I've been trying to get some political science departments in my own state and elsewhere to put somebody at work on a master's thesis, or really a PhD thesis that's worth it, let 10 senators to agree to make available to the candidate for that degree full financial records of the offices of those 10 senators for one year and let the American people understand what the senator has to pay out of his own pocket to conduct Senate business. I would have the expense money provided and I would make it publicly accountable. I'd have a report to the American people of the finances of each senator's office once a year. Let me give you quickly an example. I give lectures, speak to many universities, I speak to conventions, to business groups, to labor groups, on lectures that are arranged by the people that want me through the office. All tax accountable, always reported in my income tax.

You know what I have to do? I have to plow back into my Senate desk about three lecture fees a week to pay the extra political costs of my office to transact official Senate business. I'll never forget when Herbert Lehman was in the Senate. He talked to me many times about this problem. He told me you know where the Carol Arms Hotel is across the street from the very office building in which we're conducting this interview of his running rooms over there, maintaining them as extra office space in which he employed people out of his own pocket to do the Senate business for the state of New York. Now, he's not the only one from these larger states. I don't know what some of my other colleagues now in the Senate, I won't mention their names, have to pay out of their own pockets, you'd be shocked to know what it is. All I want to say is that I think the expense money ought to be provided and then a public accounting of its expenditure because you take my office, for example.

My office budget is based upon a formula that is used related to the population of my state. The business of my office, I've been here for 22 years. The business of my office isn't related to the population of my state. Controllingly, it's important, but it's not the controlling factor. After all, I said in the Senate, recognizing that under our Constitution, a senator is not a senator from his state for his state alone, he's from his state for the nation. That's what the Constitution of Father's provided. A congressman sits in the House of Representatives under our constitutional system as a congressman from his state for his state, there's part of your balance, you're checking balance. You're going to have to make many, many trips back to Oregon in the next year and a half for which you cannot be reimbursed. Oh, well, those are political trips and I should pay for those on my own pocket too. Why? Well, because they're personal. I'm going out there, good, many of these trips to campaign, now I'll make a lot of official trips too.

Those official trips ought to be paid for out of my office budget, only a very limited number of them can be paid for. I think my recollection is I get four a year, that's not enough for official trips. You know what I do when I go to Oregon? I maintain an office in Portland, Oregon in the federal courthouse. And when I get out there, my executive assistant in Oregon, Mr. Charles Brooks, just has every hour that I'm there scheduled with conferences with people who have problems with the federal government that can't afford to come to Washington, shouldn't be expected to come to Washington if they could afford it and I transact their business there. But shouldn't a senator who lives, a senator be able to go back to his constituency as often as he wants, a public extent? Oh, no, no, I wouldn't buy there. He should be allowed to go back as many times as it's necessary upon his able to show and make a record of it that the trip was necessary for Senate business. But if he's going back for campaign purposes, for political purposes, and not on official business, he ought to pay it himself.

Well, that means a man, without outside means, cannot go to his district often enough to write political situation to ensure his survival. No, I don't think that necessarily follows, and furthermore, when the campaign is on, if you have what I think is a fair system for the raising of campaign funds, that should be a matter of public accounting, too, and let the campaign fund pay for those trips, I don't think that the taxpayers should pay for those trips. Senator, you are not considered generally a member of the Senate club. Have you ever aspired to membership, or do you pride yourself on your none? No, I don't know of any time I've been denied admission. You have said over and over. It doesn't matter, a Senate club is bandied around a great deal, but I don't know of any discrimination against me, because on the part of the leadership to the contrary, I couldn't receive finer treatment from Mike Mansfield and the other Democratic officers of the Senate than I received.

I really think, Paul, that this is one of the myths. But you often said that you've never traded a vote that you don't believe in compromising, you don't believe in half a loaf. Are these things that most senators do? Oh, I haven't said that I don't compromise. I've said I will never compromise what I'm satisfied as a principal. Let me give you an example very quickly, suppose you've got a bill, and it's a question of whether or not you can get $750 million or $500 million. You think there ought to be $750 million, if the most you can get, I do this on education bills all the time. I'm chairman of the subcommittee on education, constantly as chairman of that committee working out compromises that don't involve any compromise principle, but suppose to take and therefore I'll take the $500 million, and vote for the $500 million, although I think ought to be $750 million, but let's take an education bill. Let's say you've got a question as to whether or not you should provide funds available in a federal appropriation so that a local school board will have funds, for example, and

special projects to vote for, to spend on ghetto schools. And it's proposed that that be stricken out of the bill. And you're stricken out of the bill because the proponents they want to strike it out means that the money would go for Negro boys and girls in ghetto schools. That's a basic principle. I'd never compromise on that. You remember just last year, we had this on the floor of the Senate where I insisted that some $50 million, and go into the bill in order to provide special project money for local school boards so it could be spent for just such purposes. Senator, every article that's written about you describes you as a maverick or a gadfly and talks about your fierce independence. Don't you really value this reputation? Don't you think it's good for you politically? No, that isn't the basis for my exercising and honest independence of judgment. Let me tell you why I exercise and honest independence of judgment because that's the

one primary obligation that every man elected to a parliamentary body owes his constituents. You ever ask yourself the question, what does the senator owe the people of the state and the nation? Well, I've said to the people of my state now for 22 years that the primary obligation I owe you is to exercise an honest independence of judgment on the merits of each issue in accordance with the facts as I find them, testing those facts against the simple question, what do these facts show the public interest to be? And when I have the answer to that question, my vote's automatic. Of course, Paul, that means I know what you have in the back of your question. That means that if partisan politics don't happen to be going in the same direction with the facts, that's just too bad for partisan politics. Presumably. I haven't demonstrated that. I haven't demonstrated anything. What's wrong with it? Presumably that many other senators of independence and integrity, what sets you apart with this reputation as a maverick, well, I don't think I am the only one that has the reputation

for exercising an honest independence of judgment. I suppose that the reason that I'm often referred to as an independent or maverick is because I probably exercise this principle more frequently than some others. You've futed on various issues with five presidents, with representatives of the news media with other senators, with members of the Oregon House delegation, and yet you always seem to get reelected. Don't you think this reputation is a combatant, is it? Oh, no, I think I get reelected because the people of my state want someone to sit in the Senate to exercise an honest independence on the merits of issues, and furthermore, Paul, because I've always been the beneficiary of a great secret political weapon. And that weapon is that the people of my state rank as some second or third in the literacy in the nation. And I'm only half joshing when I say that's very important.

You give me a literate constituency, and they expect you to follow where the facts lead as you find the facts. They expect you to exercise an honest independence of judgment. They expect you not to trade your vote. I've never traded a vote in 22 years, and none of my colleagues has asked me to for 20 years. Does this mean that a few years to discover that I won't trade votes? If I've got a good bill, or I think it's a good bill, and you're a senator with me, you should vote for it, and what I can prove about the bill. And if you've got a bad bill, and I'm satisfied it's a bad bill, then I'd be highly unethical. In fact, I think I'd be corrupt if I agreed to vote for your bill in exchange for your vote for my bill. I'm going to go you correlated the degree of literacy at Oregon with your success at the polls. Do you mean to say that if a literacy was wiped out all together in Oregon, that you'd be elected judiciously by activation? Well, of course not, that's what we call a reduce, and I say as an old professor of logic that's reducing to the absurd, I have given you a germ of great truth in regard to political

reaction in the country. You give me an enlightened literate constituency, and I'll give you a people that are going to insist that you change your mind when you think you're wrong, they're going to insist that you follow the facts lead, even though your political party is going in the opposite direction. Remember after I'm elected, and I make this clear during my campaign so that they know it when they vote for me, I don't sit in the Senate for the Democrats in Oregon. I sit in the Senate to represent the senatorial interest of every voter in my state, Democrat Republican and independent, including all those that have voted against me as well as those that vote for me. That's why I make a boast, Paul, I want to tell you about my vote. I make a boast, you find for me, any group or any individual in Oregon that opposed me in any time and past elections, that has sought my senatorial services, and they'll

tell you we got those services. Europe again next year, and there have been reports not for the first time that you're in trouble. Are you worried? Oh, you're always those reports before elections in my state. I don't know of a single time that I have run for the Senate in Oregon that you didn't get those reports. You just take those as part of the campaign. You running scared? Oh, I'm not running scared, I'm running hard. Thank you, Senator Boyce. Thank you very much. This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.