should pass the accountability act which we don't need to go into the detail of that policy issue but whether or not we're going to stay on record as seeing human rights matter in russia, in china. >> more with katrina lantos swett sunday night at 8:00 on c-span's q and a. with congress returning its spring recess, all this week we're showing you american history tv in primetime. tonight, it's focusing on the life and career of richard nixon. first, elizabeth holtzman heard impeachment hearings. this is about half an hour. >> let's fast forward to the spring and summer of 1974.

radino hasn't taken a count yet but when -- >> >> well, it's clear that the over well meeg majority of the democrats supported an impeachment. we understood that it was never going to happen unless democrats participated. that was not going to work. and so there was an effort to structure and i was part of that. there was an effort rodino participated and a small number of democrats participated in and i think the southern democrats participated in that because you had to bring everybody along or

as many people as possible. in the end, all of the democrats supported this. and seven or eight republicans supported it. i think that's the correct number. >> well, the tapes are part of the turning point. the overwhelming weight of the evidence, as i said before, i just felt like you were falling into quicksand. i mean, everywhere you turned there was misconduct. the coverup was so enormous and that wasn't the only thing. and then you had the enemy's list and the wire tapping. i mean, where did it end? where did it end? and you felt that there was

nothing. i can't really speak about what was happening in other people's minds but i think you sort of felt that there was kind of from the questions that people asking during the -- when witnesses testified or during the time of the statements of evidence read to us, you could get a good sense for where people were coming from and, sure, they were defenders of the president until virtually the last moment on the committee. but rodino understood he couldn't get every republican. what he needed was a broad group of republicans and the southern democrats and so they shaped the articles of impeachment. one was narrowly based, kind of focused on what would be -- almost an indictment. the obstruction of justice. it didn't include the illegal wire tapping. it didn't include the break into the psychiatrist's office. it didn't include the enemy's

list. so that was a separate article of impeachment which actually got more republican votes, based on the criminal code. and then the rule of law and the abuse of power, and that included the wire tapping and the misuse of government agencies. which of course was very serious and wire tapping, the enemy's least those. i haven't reread those articles lately so i can't tell you the nuances of them. >> tell us about the day of the vote. >> well, before the vote, the

important thing is that the proceedings were televised. the final hearing of the committee where the vote was taken was televised. that was a big debate within the committee. and it was actually -- rodino did not plan to have the proceedings televised at all. he was very worried that people would grandstand. but a colleague from utah was a strong advocate of televising the proceedings. he said, this is the way of letting the american people know what our work is. how else can we get their support? it needs to be televised. and there was a big debate in the democratic caucus about this and ultimately rodino gave in. i don't know if it was to committee vote but they allowed the proceedings to be televised and that was critical because the public could see how most of the members were being really

sincere in their views and there was evidence and the process was a fair process. the vote on the first articles of impeachment took place in the evening after lengthy debate. each one of us -- the proceeding was such that each one of us got to make an opening statement and, of course, barbara jordan made a very electric one, going back to the origins of the constitution and the fact that she wasn't allowed to be in the constitution. well, that women couldn't be in the constitution, not only blacks but women weren't included. in terms of at least the right to vote. but the vote itself took place as just all of the votes in the committee take place.

the role is read and the votes are taken. when it came to me, i remember feeling it was very hard to vote. as much as i disagreed with president nixon's policies, as much as i knew how justifiable a yes for a vote was, still, it was an awful, solemn feeling to think you are sitting in judgment and you had to be sitting in judgment on a president of the united states who had committed acts of this gravity and this seriousness and this awfulness. it was a very unpleasant moment. i don't think any member of the committee took any pleasure whatsoever in voting for the impeachment of president nixon. in fact, peter rodino went back to his office and cried.

certainly it gave him no pleasure. no one ever wanted to see this happen. >> were you surprised that president nixon resigned rather than press forward with this case? >> yes. i wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do. it was clear by the time the supreme court ruled that -- and the republican members of the house who had not supported him supported him because now you can listen to all of the tapes and now additional tapes have to be released and those tapes had the quote, unquote, smoking gun. it was clear that the impeachment vote in the house of representatives would be overwhelming. maybe they would be five or ten people supporting richard nixon but not more than that. and the vote in the senate would be overwhelming, too. where would the support come

from? every republican and democrat on the house judiciary committee said that he should be impeached. this is not something that should be lightly ilg anothered, period. i didn't know exactly what was going to happen but i guess the republican leaders in the house and senate got extremely concerned because you had elections scheduled for november. this was early august. and if there had been a trial vote in the house of representatives and then a trial in the senate would have come right up against the november elections, as it was, the republicans lost a huge number of seats and it was called the watergate class in november 1974. but it would have been far, far worse if nixon had stood trial and they had been -- during that period of time running up to the

election. so i think there was a lot of pressure put on president nixon. i mean, i'm assuming that. i don't really know -- to resign. in any case, he knew that there was no hope. the impeachment process -- he was going to be removed from office. there was no question about that. there was no question in anybody's mind, even without the smoking gun tape, you had huge public support for the results of the house judiciary committee, a fair process, a process that ultimately they could see on television, republicans joining with democrats in substantial numbers. so it wasn't going to be easy to overcome that but when you had all of the republicans then deciding to join the democrats, it was -- there was no hope that he could beat this. >> where were you the day he resigned? >> i was in washington. i was in my office. i can't remember exactly what was happening but we all ran to the television and watched his

resignation and getting on the plane and the bravado. it was sad but it was really sad that he never acknowledged what he had done to the country and what had he done that was wrong. >> tell us about the experience of questioning president ford about the party. >> well, as surprising as theress seg nation was, the ford pardon really came as -- it was a very sad surprise to me and i was very upset by it because i thought that here we were on the house judiciary committee trying to establish that the rule of law was really the most important thick and that a president can't take the law into his own hands and here we are in early september, that decision had been made in july.

president nixon had resigned in the face of that, that that's how they felt. and then questioned under highly circumstances and the question on everybody's lips was, was there some sort of deal that the president was part and part of the deal to get president nixon to resign his office, which would have raiseder serious constitutional questions but i discovered that the house judiciary committee had no interest in investigating this. as soon as the pardon was issued, several members of the house introduced resolutions of inquiry. those are a special privilege

resolutions and you can call for a vote on the house floor if the committee doesn't act on the resolution of inquiry. and they call for information about what happened leading up to the pardon. i think one of the authors was there but i can't remember the other. she wasn't the only one. and so i was on the subcommittee to which these articles, these resolutions of inquiry were referred and my reaction was, we met, democrats met and i said, well, we should conduct an investigation first. we should request the documents from the white house pertaining to the pardon. we should interview the people who participate in the pardon. you had a young lawyer who was the go between here but you also had other members of the present

staff who should have been interviewed. i think it was the press secretary that resigned in protest. so that, i thought, was -- you know, a normal process. i remember before i entered congress, i had just been practicing law at one of the major law firms of new york and major national law firms. this is what you did when you started a case. you would get the document and interview the witnesses and find out what is going on. and since it seemed so natural and so plausible and so logical to do that, the committee said -- the subcommittee said to me, well, sure, liz, that's a great idea. that's a terrific idea but never happened. they never asked for one document. they never asked for one witness and i saw that time was going by and i said, what are you doing about this? and the answer was, yes, we are going to do it. ne therefore did t president

ford understanding that this was -- i guess realizing there was no serious investigation took the bull by the horns and said, i'm going to go and testify to you and tell you exactly what happened and i again said to him, we should not be hearing to the committee staff and the committee chair and the members of the committee. we should not be hearing from the president. we can't ask him intelligent questions until we've done our homework and what happened and so forth. they weren't going to do it. so the president came. i asked for more time for each one of us to question the president. we did not get any more time to question the president. so nobody asked him any tough questions. everybody was saying how nice it was, you've come down to congress to tell us what you think. and i didn't want to have to do this because it's not very nice to ask for a tough question to the president of the united

states but i didn't see how i could avoid that. i was a low person on the totem pole. i was the last person to ask questions so i was hoping someone would ask these questions before they got to me. there were four other democrats on the committee before me. and not to mention republicans. nobody asked any tough questions about the pardon and so i had prepared beforehand and thinking that this might happen, and i said, because i also thought he could fill lee buster. i didn't want to ask one question and get an answer and have my five questions. i said i'm sure that there are others that need to be answered but would you please answer these and they included, you know, why he had done this in such haste, why he went outside the normal process, why he didn't get a confession from richard nixon that he had done something wrong, was there a

deal, what were the conversations that had taken place with hagge and so forth. so i asked my questions and the president said emphatically there was no deal but i think to this day the answer is not clear. the hage has never been skeed under oath about this. he was one of the people involved, he had been a former staff member to richard nixon. a lot of envelopes about secret conversations came out after the testimony. so it was a very unsatisfactory, very unsatisfactory conclusion because it showed, number one, that the committee wasn't willing to make a proper investigation. number two, that they were basically allowing a double standard of justice to take place. one for the period of time of the united states, one for everybody else, just months after having reasserted basic

constitutional authority in the rule of law which means nobody gets preferential treatment. and the nixon pardon has had terrible ramifications. we've are other pardons of top flight government officials who clearly engaged in wrongdoing and now -- and we're permitted to go free. it's happened with president bush one. questions have been raised about president bush 2 will issue the pardon. so i think it set -- it ended -- the watergate proceedings was a bad taste, at least in my mouth and i think it established a bad precedence in the future. high government officials can expect a pardon if they do something wrong, and criminal.

>> there's -- there has been some talk that the barrpardon d provide some healing. >> i think that's nonsense. i think the healing took place -- first of all, there is no healing. we're grownups. oh, we can't survive an impeachment, they said that. the country can't stand it. guess what, we can withstand it no problem. to the extent there was any division, in my mind, the impeachment process brought the country together because whether hu voted for nixon, whether you were republican, an independent, a democrat, an unaffiliated, you felt that the rule of law had been carried out, that congress had acted responsibly, that the other institutions of government had done their job. the courts had done their job, congress had done their job. even if the president hadn't --

our system of government worked and i think that made -- and people renewed their commitment to the idea that the rule of law was more important than party and then any single person. that's what came out of it. we rediscovered this about ourselves as a nation. we discovered it originally when the constitution was written but we didn't really have a chance to rediscover it. what happened was, we were healed by this process. we reconnected to our commitment to the rule of law and then you had president ford coming and then shattering that commitment to the rule of law. i don't think there was -- i don't agree with that at all. and the interesting thing to me is initially the judge who is a who are row to me in this process said a pardon is the correct thing to do and then when he wrote this book he said, i am wrong. it wasn't the right thing to do

and that it did set a double standard. >> did you talk to any republicans about that, republican colleagues about this? did -- >> i'm sure we did but i don't -- >> any of them share your view? >> i don't recall. i just don't recall. >> what -- >> listen, there weren't many democrats that shared my view. so i don't know whether republicans would have. >> you mean, most of your democratic colleagues thought that the pardon was necessary? >> i don't know if they thought the pardon -- they may not have liked the president but they weren't willing to challenge president ford. >> but the pardon was unpopular with the american people and that goes, again, to the question of healing. americans are angry about the pardon and president ford paid a huge political price. so i don't see how you can say there is healing when they are angry enough to take it out on him in the next election. >> what effect do you think this

experience had on the democratic party? >> i don't really -- that's a good question but i don't know that you could -- i've never really looked at it from that point of view. i've looked at it from the point of view of what it's done to the country but not what it did to the party. >> what did it do to the country? >> well, watergate as a whole showed that presidents could abuse their power and that despite the hope that people would obey the law that presidents of the united states would not, at least you had a gross example of illegality with regard to president nixon. you also saw the institutions of government, given the chance, could do the right thing. maybe the most important thing was that the american people supported the rule of law and

the constitutional process and that was more important than president nixon's political survival even though most just voted for him. so i think it showed a wisdom and real political smarts on the part of the american people. >> how important was vietnam to congress. >> i ran to stop the war in vietnam. that was my platform and i was elected on that basis. people in my district didn't want the war and i made it very clear what my position was on it. and that's -- i believe, one of the reasons why i was elected. maybe the key reason. i was a supporter of the war. had he been a big supporter of the war from the get-go and received many campaign contributions from contractors who were doing work in connection with the war.

>> 1974, '75, the ford administration is looking to provide more assistance to south vietnam. congress doesn't support that. do you recall what was going on at the time? >> i actually don't recall those votes or that debate. but i don't know that -- it's not any surprise to me that the house decided not to do that. the troops were out. we wanted the war over. the united states -- the posse that the administration was going to work hadn't worked. it was a civil war and we didn't think the u.s. should be playing a role in it anymore.

what i do remember vividly was at the very end, there was efforts to give president ford additional powers to -- war making powers to help in the evacuation and there was a big debate in the house about that. i participated in that. at least i remember so vividly, it must have taken place between 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. so that took place in my mind. and those efforts to give him additional war making powers were rejected given the experience of the gulf of tonkin resolution and the president's war making powers unless it was very clear and urgent and the need was overwhelming. >> what role did you play, if any, in shaping legislation that made it harder for the government to undertake illegal

water tapping? >> no, i was not part of that. i helped to draft an amendment that was adopted that required notice to congress before covert actions could be undertaken but that was not necessarily a result of the watergate revelations as much as the revelations of the church committee. >> was that -- this is the -- >> yes, this is an amendment to legislation that created the -- may have created the intelligence committees. >> i see. liz, is there any other anecdotes you'd like to oh preserve for the library? >> well, i'm sure more will come to mind but -- oh, yeah.

the only other one i'd like to mention is -- you asked about my election and campaign for election to congress and i was very much opposed to the war and when i got to washington -- i think just before we were inaugurated or sworn in, i should say, the carpet bombing of hanoi took place. >> christmas party. >> and carpet bombing. >> and i decided that i would not go into the white house and shake the president's hand after that. and i didn't. >> you worked for john lindsay, did you? what did you do for john lindsay? >> i worked as one of his

assistance. there was a job assistant to the mayor and my job was to bely ly ace son and then i worked on development for mayor lindsay. actually, when i was in congress, it was a very much more bipartisan endeavor than it has deteriorated into in subsequent decades. democrats and republicans tried to work together on many issues. i mean, of course you didn't have the hostility and the emnity and the name calling and the ranker that exists today and that's wrong. that's bad. we worked -- i think it was very important that we had a bipartisan result on the impeachment and it won't have been successful otherwise.

maybe richard nixon would have finished his term. >> so you wouldn't date the beginning of the rankerous -- >> no. >> to this period? >> no. because democrats and republicans continued to work together throughout my tenure in congress through 1981. and so, no, i don't think that this changed anything because in the end all of the republicans joined with us. so i don't think watergate started this process. not at all. >> thank you, liz. >> thank you. >> thursday on washington journal, stephen moore, wall street editorial board member joins us to talk about the presidents and republican proposal rules, the buffett rule and tax policy. then howard kurtz and lauren ashburn discuss their newly