independent counsel act, i mean t the democrats would introduce one in place. vehemently opposed to that. and i argued vehemently in the white house to the president that he should not appoint an independent counsel. i said this is a dangerous institution. i said, there's no basis to appoint here. you did nothing wrong in office here. you did nothing wrong in arkansas 15 years ago but it has nothing to do with you being president. you appoint this it will be a knife in your heart. whoever is appointed independent counsel will take years, i said you know, if you appointed me as independent counsel, me. me. your counsel. bernie. make me independent. you know what i would do? i said. i'll tell you what. i would spend three or four years investigating everything in arkansas, i would turn over every rock, because i'm not going to go back to new york not having explored. i'm sure i'll find people who committed criminal acts in arkansas the last 20 years. i have a feeling mr. president that probably happened and maybe

those people in order to avoid trying to go to jail will remember something about you, which didn't happen but will remember something about you and say things like -- this is crazy. there's no basis to do this. all you will do is create an institution which will haunt you as long as you're president and beyond. don't do this. don't do this. the others were saying that's ridiculous, the republicans, even democrats are coming out want it. it will end the media, the media storm that's going on now with respect to whitewater and things like that. i said no. we had a big debate on the telephone. it's all mentioned in a recent book. i said -- you have to do something, i'll tell you what you do. what you do, mr. president, you and hillary go down to the senate judiciary committee and testify. ford testified after the nixon pardon.

go down and testify. let them ask you any question they want about whitewater. and they started screaming, the other staff members, stephan open miss started screaming this is -- i'd rather have vast publicity. you'll handle testimony because there is nothing here, than set up an institution with 25 fbi agents who will start investigating you and your friends in arkansas for the rest of your presidency. when i said this by the way monica lewinsky was a junior in high school. she wasn't around at this time. this is six years. don't set up this institution. they will be after you, your friends and everything. oh, they keep asking me about it. he folded. he folded. even hillary folded. hillary who was on my side and couldn't deal with it. they appointed the independent counsel. in the first one was replaced, bob fisk by ken starr, i theft

white house because i was now a very controversial figure who gave bad advise about not appointing independent counsel so i left after a year and a quarter in the white house and what happened, happened. the rest is history. he did write in his memoir the biggest mistake he made was appointing independent counsel. so. but it's a dangerous institution to be used very sparingly, especially with respect to a president. but that's what happened. that affected me. i understood, i understood the dangers of '74 did affect me for '93-94 and i also, hillary was in 73 and 74 and with me in 93, 94. she understood it. but the great pressure in the white house, the staff members and foolish democratic senators, they folded. they didn't fold, the clinton --

that changed history too. the clinton presidency would have proceeded. i'm not justifying any conduct president conducted related to miss lewinsky later on. the fact is it wouldn't have had the impact on his presidency it had, there would have been no impeachment. al gore would probably have been elected president in 2000 and the world would have been different. that's what happens. if nixon destroyed the tapes the world would have been different f. president clinton had listened to me. but i'm -- i lead a good life. i'm a happy man. it was tricky meeting with the whole committee at once at times because of a lot of leaks and those always -- we always worried about that. the staff never leaked. that's another great tribute to the staff. i'm sure others may have mentioned this. this is a staff that never leaked and nobody's written a book. about this. no staff member has ever tried

to write sort of an inside view of what happened here. this is confidential, private. many of us never talked about this in a most general way, made a speech now and then. it was very g. in answer to your question, yes, we tried to communicate with various representatives and i also would meet from time to time with some of them that had questions. most of my time was putting together the ultimate factual presentation. in fact, i think i told you the story before, i was so convinced that we're going to have to go to trial in the senate after finally looked like the articles of impeachment weren't going to pass on a nonpartisan basis i remember the resignation of president nixon. i remember that day. and i remember, i -- my wife was

in washington with our three children and she wanted to go home because i was working around the clock. our kids were little. they had to go back to school. she wanted to go back to our home in west chester county. i wanted her to stay. we were having big discussions about that to put it mildly about i wanted her to stay with me because i wanted her there with the kids and she wanted to go back because she never saw me and the kids never saw me. so we were having these discussions. and then comes august of 1974, shows my mind-set. i am now passed the votes, the key votes in the house, in effect, the articles of impeachment have been approved. my focusing on as i have been all along how do we try this case? how do we try this first case in the senate. the first trial in the senate in 100 or so years. who do we call as witnesses? what exhibits do we use?

how do we use the tapes. i'm trying to figure it all out. some people are helping me but not a lot of help. not a lot of people on staff who tried a lot of case and none of us tried a case in the senate. as an aside, i'll get back to this, jim st. clair at one session of the committee when he was there he said to me you know, you and i are learning obsolete skills. i said what are you talking about? i'm learning how to defend a president and you're learning how to prosecute a president and neither one of us will have much use of this in private practice. that may be true. i started laughing. in any event, i figure out how to try this. i'm sitting in my office and i remember i think it was dorr who said bernie, the president is about to speak, all sorts of rumors, like he might resign, said why don't you come. we set up a television in the common room and why don't you come. i said no, i don't want to

watch. he's not going to resign. nothing is going to ham. it's going to be another rationalization. i got to work, figure out. i guess i was a little crazed. when is the trial, are they going to take place 18 month or so. got to be fast and i got to figure out what are we going to do. in my mind because we didn't have a lot of trial lawyers i didn't have a lot of help. maybe more than i thought. so he looked at me straight you're being silly and he walks out. 15 minutes later bert jenner walks in. this i remember. bernie, stop being an idiot. you're being an idiot. come and watch with the rest of the staff the speech. we're going to watch together. then go back to work after that. so in a morose fashion i put my pencil down, all right. i'm acting stupid. i walk in and sit down in a chair, a little television set. you don't have the fancy

televisions we have today. i'm looking at the set glaring, not talking to anybody. and president nixon comes on the screen and he starts the speech. and he says he's resigned. totally shocked. i was convinced he would never resign. he's going to resign. i never forget. i thought gee whiz, i said, now i don't have to fwit my wife any more. that's all i thought b. i didn't think about history, the impeachment, what we did. i thought my god, i can go home tonight and no fight. we can go home. we can go home. with the kids. that's all i thought. i didn't think gee, this is really a historic event. a president resigning and we were part of this process. i thought about. my wife's going to be -- i don't know if she would be happy because i can go home with her but we're going to go home

together. and she was happy. the next morning i remember watching president nixon speak to the white house staff, that amazing speech, you know, about you know, don't get angry because then they win, things like that. that famous -- actually very moving. he was really, i remember watching with my wife and my kids were too little. they were there but my mother-in-law was there to try to keep the peace. we were watching it together and looking at the speech. we were going to go home. and that's what i remember about the end of it. >> could we get a sense of how you would have tried the case by looking at dorr's final report? >> first, you know, one of the interesting issues was who tries the case? that's what i was also concerned about. you appoint house managers.

lawyers don't really try the case on the floor of the senate. it was interesting in the clinton impeachment later on how that worked. chuck ruff who i knew, spoke on the floor of the senate. i was trying to think, would we be able to speak on the floor of the senate? would the lawyers be able to speak? and if not, or even if they were, which congressman would we be using to present our case. this was all -- and would we be using witnesses. or just documents. i was just in the beginning of that stage. or we just play tapes. or call john dean and play the tape. this is the kind ever things i was wrestling with. and we had three articles. how do we prove each of the articles? of impeachment along with the watergate article, article 1, article 2, the abuse of agency articles. one was the break-in.

number two was abuse of various agencies and three is failure to turn over documents to the committee. how do you make those presentations? and i was starting to weigh those things at the time. to me it was difficult and important to sort of how do you try a case in the senate. >> did you talk to anybody in the senate? nofrnlths. no. it ended suddenly. >> did you have a sense of time table? >> yes. i was very concerned about that. that's why i didn't want to leave my office. i thought it would be fairly quick. i thought 30 to 60 days after the articles of impeachment would come down. and that's an important time to prepare a case. and we'd have to prepare the congressman because we weren't really going to be able, and even in the clinton impeachment, you have congressmen present on the floor so we have to prepare

them. they are not as steeped in it. i have to spend time preparing them, how, who is going to prepare them. this was a big job if he wanted to find all the way through. >> what role would john dorr have played? >> that's an interesting -- i envisioned him playing a very important role making you know, basic -- if the -- yeah, if the senate would have permitted it, then we had to get senate permission t whole procedure thing, i remember reading about the johnson impeachment. how they did it there. but that was sort after cut and dried thing. he fired stanton, there's no real factual issues. sort of a legal determination. he had a right to fire one contrary to an act of congress in effect. but we got all sorts of factual

things and how do you put them forward? i wanted john to play a big role. not me. i didn't envision myself as the prosecutor. john was the leader of the staff. though maybe i thought i could play some role but never articulated it. he would make the decision. he speaking on behalf of the staff would make a good impression. he has the right balance. which of the house members and maybe the more conservative like jim mann would be effective. they were very effective on the committee when they spoke. jim mann was great. the watchman in the night speech that he made. these are all decisions that were in the process of being made at the time. when the president made it much easier by resigning. >> did mr. dorr play any role as a consultant at the time of the clinton impeach snmt? >> not to my -- i don't know.

i wasn't around in the clinton impeachment. listen to me there would be no clinton impeachment. but i wasn't around. the answer is probably not. but i don't know for sure. >> did you know that bert marshall opposed article 3? >> no. i did not know that. he did? that's interesting. >> he and owen fist had a debate about it. owen did support it. >> that was important. see, he -- i was a strong supporter of article 3. and i did know that dorr reached out to other people such as fist and marshall. he didn't rely on my judgment holily. he looked to me for advice and -- but he was looking to other people as well. so if i argued strongly as i did

for article 3 i knew he would go to other -- like he should. that's the right thing. just because i say there should be article 3 doesn't mean there smub article 3. it was part of my -- even article 3, he was part -- the reason i wanted article 3 is because we had to sit down to the president's -- the executive branch is obligated, i'm always thinking trial in the senate. the ultimate trial and they don't give us the material, it makes the trial that much more difficult and that was an impeachable offense. in an impeachment process. it was important. it inhibited. they had no right to with hold anything. i believe in executive privilege. i was a big defender but if there is an itch peachable, it should have been done in the clinton proceedings. >> it's a tough question,

though. you said legitimate impeachment. >> no, no, no. yes. it's true, you can't -- the congress decides in effect whether it's -- if it starts -- right. i shouldn't even use the qualify legitimate. there was an impeachment proceeding in 1998, the clinton impeachment proceeding. it's a legitimate proceeding. it was just wrong. it's legitimate. i don't think clinton could claim executive privilege in that, claiming the proceeding is legitimate. the committee authorized the impeachment. he has to cooperate or suffer the consequences. i think a lot of mistakes were made. not so much in the impeachment. i don't think he should have done a number of things. but i wasn't involved. i wasn't counsel to the

president. i was long gone. i left in 1994. this took place four or five years later. >> a couple of points to see what role you played. did you -- there was a debate in the staff, the '74 impeachment staff, about whether this was a grand jury or not. and what rights to a court the president's defense counsel, whether that person -- whether st. clair could cross-examine, things like that. >> yeah. this was for the congress to determine. that's what i felt. this was -- impeachment is solely in the province of the legislative branch. the house, sort after grand jury as the trial court and the ultimate finder of fact or conclusions of law in effect. its up to the house to set whatever procedure it believes

appropriate. i believed in that. but i also believed from points of fairness and due process the president had to be given every opportunity to make whatever defense he wanted to make. you don't have that necessarily in a grand jury but i felt the house didn't have to do it but i felt it should do it. it should do it so the country sees. this is a very significant thing, in our country when you try to impeach a president. and consequently, it should be fair and perceived to be fair. and therefore st. clair should be permitted to make whatever arguments he wished to make to present whatever witnesses, whatever documents he wished to do. he might not have that right in a grand jury but this is different. it is a grand inquest, grand jury type of proceeding but it has to be done fairly and in accordance with due process. congress itself and the committee can make the decisions what that requires and what it

doesn't require. that's what i believed at the time and i think that's the way the committee acted. >> it is but and i believe john dorr shared that. >> yes. believe john doerr shared that. >> yes, he did. >> there was a zee bait. >> there was a debate. >> i think some people are saying no. >> no, we should present it. we present it, then there's a trial in the senate and both sides can make whatever presentation they make. i didn't feel that was the correct thing to do in the house. the whole country was looking at this. first we had secret sessions, then we had public sessions. actually, that was a tricky issue. whether to go public or not with these sessions. we never went public, i believe, we never went public with the evidentiary sessions. that was an interesting issue. do you have public sessions on tv all over the country with respect to the presentation of evidence? well, we did, if i'm correct in

my memory, and whether we had all the presentations including witness testimony, done in private, but the debate. the ultimate debate on whether to vote on the articles of impeachment was done in public. i'm correct on that, right? that's the important thing. that was the interesting thing. did we want to really go on television and hear davis read from statements of information? devastatingly boring. even do we want to go on television as the senate watergate committee did and hear john dean testify and hear john mitchell testify? no. in that sense, we analogized it to a grand jury. grand jury proceedings are not public, but trial proceedings are public. we had the sense to realize, we were all looking for exciting public hearings before the house judiciary committee. whatever the senate did, the

senate did. would do what you would do, and the senate presumably would go public, but maybe not. the senate could do whatever it wished. here we analogized it to the grand jury. the evidentiary presentation, including st. clair's presentation, we allowed st. clair to make a presentation, which is different than the grand jury. we allow this to make a presentation. that's done in private. now the ultimate decision-making process will be done in public. so we had these public hearings, public sessions which each of the members was able to speak to present his arguments and to have a debate in public. >> francis o'brien remembers it being actually some conflict over whether to even make that part public. >> correct. no, you could -- there was an argument which i don't think i would have favored. i'm not sure what my position would have been at the time. yes, that was a very interesting judgment, though, that was made. and i agree with it. it came out very well, ultimately. the committee members really

shone on both sides of the aisle including the people arguing in favor of the president, like wiggins, i remember vividly at this point. we struck the right balance. we understood that you can make the evidentiary proceedings public. one, because they would fall flat, in effect. there's no smoking guns, even though we had a smoking gun tape in the end, but there was no smoking guns like that. that would fall flat, and that should be done in private like a grand jury. it's not a trial. this is whether -- but although we gave st. clair the rights that he wouldn't have before a grand jury, so kind of the rights he would have at a trial. but the decision-making process should be the articulation of why people are doing what they're doing. it should be made public, and it worked perfectly. >> francis o'brien remembered that john doerr was very nervous about that. >> yes. i agree.

and if he was nervous, i was probably nervous about it, too, at the time. i don't remember. i really don't remember. i just -- i remember i didn't want the evidentiary things to go public. and certainly john doerr didn't, which is what counted here. but i think -- i wasn't all that nervous about the committee going public at that particular point in time. i wanted that. i thought that would be good. maybe i'm -- i don't remember arguing it necessarily. i thought it would be good because i thought the country should hear it. i thought it would be good for us because committee members would have to be, even though who were opposed to this, would really have to be a lot straighter, so to speak, if they really had to make a public presentation than what you could say in a private presentation. >> do you remember the pressure that chairman rodino placed on mr. doerr to be a little bit more assertive? >> yes. >> yes, yes.

the democrat -- the democrats, especially the ones who were most in favor of impeachment, were very concerned that the staff generally, and dear in particular, were not aggressive enough. remember, the counterpart of doar's theory about being even-handed and looking neutral, you know, is that it frustrated some of the democrats who wanted to prosecute him. who wanted somebody who was really, you know, an aggressive prosecutor. and some of them looked to me to try to perform that role. and doar would send me to talk to them to sort of satisfy them. so i would talk to some of the more -- i'll call them radical democrats who were more comfortable with me because i came off more as a prosecutorial type at that time. >> also elizabeth holtzman knew you. >> holtzman knew me. i knew charlie rangel a little bit.

i knew some of the others, too. so they sort of looked to me. i would meet with them sometimes. i would tell them, yeah, we're doing the right thing to try and calm them down. generally doar was the out-front guy. and he should have been the out-front guy. they wanted him to be more aggressive. and then peter rodino probably did put more pressure to be aggressive. but doar was doar, and it worked perfectly. it worked as well as -- doar's sel self-effacing role, when we did go public, it was not as if a drawer makes some grand speech. it was for the committee members. it was the right way to do it, you know. it was the right way to do it. the clinton impeachment, i was watching it. you know, these very partisan committee staff, they just

rubbed people wrong. doar understood instinctively, this doesn't work. it doesn't work on tv to be overly aggressively prosecutorial. it doesn't work. in this kind of situation. that's why these guys fell flat in the clinton impeepmeachment many years later. and by doar being self-effacing, as i said, he left it to committee members to make the case. and it turned out to be better. yes, some of them were moorad cal than others. holtzman compared to flowers and jim manm, but it was more effective for them to do it than for any lawyer to do it. any lawyer to do it. at least in the context of an impeachment proceeding, namely the house impeachment proceeding rather than a trial in the senate. >> bernie, what is it you don't like about pencils? >> oh, yes, i've heard this, yes.

no, of course, i'm a very laid-back guy, as everybody can see. i think people remember me breaking pencils. they were government pencils. i said, i'll pay for the pencils. i would walk around sometimes snapping pencils. but i don't do that anymore. i'm a little older now. i don't snap pencils. still when i try a case, i get wound up. trial work is tough work. but it's fascinating. >> mr. doar was very careful about keeping his cards close to his chest. >> yes. >> but listening to the tapes had an effect on him, didn't it? >> yes. yes. it confirmed -- we all believe ed that the president really acted -- there really was a

misuse. it was wrong to break into the headquarters of your political opponents. it's wrong to wiretap. it's wrong to break into the headquarters of a psychiatrist. you know. and then to misuse the fbi. lmplg p. p l. patrick ray and the cia. and when we heard the tapes, it had an impact. and it did have an impact on doar. maybe doar -- yonl he can speak for himself -- but would have reached a conclusion that would have reached impeachment, without our tapes, i don't know what conclusion he would have reached. i don't know what we would have done at that point. >> did he give you a sense of what he was thinking, or did he not share it? how did it work? >> what he said we have to do, he didn't give us thi