former director. at 9:00 p.m. eastern, in his book "leak" max hall dand examines why a fbi official became deep throat. at 10:00 p.m., white house officials and investigators and the "the washington post" reporters who first broke the story. american history tv in prime time, all this week on c-span3. next, an oral history interview that provides a new look in to the nixon impeachment inquiry. to mark the 40th anniversary of the break-in on june 17th, the nixon presidential library released interviews with key staff charged with investigating whether there were grounds to impeach president nixon. this is the first time that many of these individuals have spoken for the record about the work and interpolitics of the impeachment inquiry. a selection of these interviews will be televised for the first time on american history tv throughout june. we hear next from william weld

who served as a member of the house judiciary committee impeachment staff. he recalls the committee's work to define what constituted grounds for impeachment. mr. weld later served as governor of massachusetts. >> hi. i'm tim naftali. i'm director of the richard nixon presidential library and museum in yorba linda, california. september 28, 2011. i have the honor and privilege to interview william weld. thank you for joining us today. please tell us how you came to be involved with the inquiry. >> i got a call in the fall of 1973. i was an associate at a law firm in boston. asking me if i would be interested in interviewing for a job on the impeachment staff. at that point, it hadn't really gotten off the ground. i said, no, i have to stay on until i make partner. and then i called back in 15 seconds and said i made a grave mistake. can i still interview?

he said, yes. so i had a telephone interview with sam garrison, running the republican side of the staff, not yet fully unified. some thought it never was. i went down, met with sam, had a good interview with him. and i was engaged to come in quite shortly thereafter and reported for duty in december 1973. >> tell us a little bit about -- first of all, about sam garrison. give us a word picture of him, please. >> he was a devoted family man. i think from the south. from richmond. and he worked like a tiger. slept in on sunday mornings but that was about it. he and i had a good personal relationship. >> you were there before john dohr was named. >> i'm sure i was there before bert jenner. maybe it was before dohr. i remember showing up for work, and if i was the first staffer,

hilary rodham from yale law school was the second staffer, and i remember john dohr calling us into his office, bill, hillary, we have a research project here. we have to find out what constitutes grounds for impeachment of a president. and there doesn't seem to be any case directly on point. so let's see. it's friday afternoon. i don't want to ruin your weekend. why don't you have the memo on my desk tuesday morning? we said, fine, chief. looked around, looked around, and six months later, after 40 lawyers had gone blind trying to figure out what the answer to that question was, we decided that the answer to the question really resided in the newspapers at the time. not in decided law cases. >> some of the literature that's been written about the committee suggests that you and john davidson wrote a minority opinion on the grounds for constitution. for constitutional grounds for impeachment. >> i know we wrote a minority

memo on the right of jim st. clair, my future law partner, to cross-examine witnesses. i'm not sure that we ever wrote a formal minority memo. the big question in the early days was, does the grounds for impeachment have to be a crime? and i can remember being of the view early on that really it should be required that it's a crime or there is really no stopping point any president could be impeached for anything. and the only check would be political. the ultimate memo that we filed, all filed said, well, what if a president took up a life of pleasure in a foreign land? that might not be a crime under u.s. statutory law, but it certainly would be grounds for removal from office. and i found and find that rather persuasive, and i guess the dirty little secret is that the only check is political.

i remember early on congressman gerald ford, future president ford, had said an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the house and two thirds of the senate say it is. and everyone said, oh, poor gerry ford, played too much football without a helmet. really doesn't anything. and then joe wood task force, stated publicly. you know what congressman ford said was a terse but profound statement of impeachable offense. >> did you find your view shifted? >> i think my own view shifted a little bit. i was worry the about the bright line criminal crime requirement early on, and ultimately came to the view that impeachment was a remedy directed at a defect, usually between the branches of the government. usurping the powers or functions of another branch or perhaps dereliction, failing to discharge the duties incumbent

on you for your branch. we set a lot of store by the take care clause. the president takes care that the laws be faithfully executed. and there was a feeling i think that in the whole mess with the watergate conspiracy and misuse of the fbi and cia that the president had not taken care that the laws be faithfully executed and that -- you know, it took a while to get there. there was a lot of floundering around. >> was there a sense -- how did you in your own mind separate the actions of the lieutenants from the president? or did you come to the conclusion that the president is responsible for the actions of his lieutenants? >> you mean haldeman and ehrlichman? >> i mean haldeman and ehrlichman indeed. >> yeah. but most of -- i didn't listen to all of the tapes but i listened to a lot of them. and haldeman and ehrlichman and the president all seemed to be on the same page. i would say the president was not going, oh, really?

that's an interesting idea. he was right there with them. there's no question of parasite and host here. >> since you mentioned him, could you give us a word picture of james st. clair, since you were his partner later? >> later. jim came in, and, you know, even at that point, he was a coony, old trial lawyer and my one abiding memory of him is i was presenting the case for the committee on an article based on impoundment of funds. failure to spend funds that had been appropriated. i think a lot of them were clean air act. clean water act. so i said, well, here's the case for impoundment and then i said here's the arguments the other way. and bob mcclure from illinois, said, well, are there any other possible defenses that the president should raise? this was right in the thick of all the fight over the documents and the supreme court and

whether the president could whoeld documents. and i said, yes, based on case a, b, and c, i said very proudly, the president could stand upon the ground and the defense of sovereign immunity. and st. clair, seated three feet to my right and he just collapsed laughing. because that was obviously such bad politics at the time. >> tell us a bit about the effect that bert jenner had at the time i joined. on your work. >> bert was the original, you know, class "a" lit dayer. he had argued witter shoon versus illinois in the supreme court and made the case turn by saying, well, your honors need not reach this issue. you can decide upon this narrow ground and they went upon it immediately. he was a highly distinguished lawyer. the interesting thing that was -- an interesting thing was that john dohr had this very strong view, we wanted to have a unified staff, and, you know, my playmates were mostly hillary

rodham, john lagowitz, dagmar hamilton, to some extent joe woods, but i also worked closely with john davidson, john whitman and sam garrison on the republican side. but i was welcomed in both camps. i'm not sure everybody was welcome in both camps, and i think the hard core of the watergate task force, i'm not aware that that had any republicans on it. so the evidence of the watergate conspiracy, i think, was mainly developed by the democratic staff. and they were not -- they were not quite so partisan as the congressman from texas who at a democratic caucus was asked, what is the theme of jack brooks? what's the theme of this article ii about agency abuse, fbi, cia, it's all so confusing. i don't understand it. he took his cigar out of it, and said the theme of this argument is we're going to get that son of a bitch out of there. but staff weren't permitted to think or speak in some ways.

but there's no question that some of them were not friendly to president nixon. >> was there some pressure on the republicans in the staff because there are a number of minority members of the staff who were very disappointed with how things were going and how john dohr was doing his job. was there any pressure on you? were they asking you questions? >> the republican members of the committee had a perfect right to have their own legal research done. i did that. i think that minority memo you referred to earlier might have been about st. clair's right of cross-examination. there would be the occasional research request from dell latter, chuck wiggins, robert mclurie, somebody on the -- dave dennis, some of the republican members. and we would do that. i thought we had that obligation. on the other hand, i spent a lot

of time with the democrats. it may have helped my job was on the legal constitutional side more than the factual development side. might have made that easier. >> once the committee chose the broad interpretation of impeachable offenses or high crimes and misdemeanors, what did you shift? after february, what were you focusing on? you continued to work on the legal case or the -- >> yeah, i did a lot of work on the legal case. i listened to tapes. i by myself developed and proposed and presented to the committee the case on impoundment, which i think was article vi. not accepted but did get some votes. that one did involve more courts of law. there had been 15 or 20 cases, mostly slapping down the president's position, but some upholding it. that was very law heavy. >> that never got submitted to

the committee, is sixth article, to my knowledge. >> it was submitted because i testified before the committee. >> but they didn't -- i don't believe they voted on it. >> well, yes, they did. i think it was voted down 27-11 or something like that. >> oh. did you play a role in shaping any of the other articles? >> i remember a lot of discussion about agency abuse. article ii. i don't think i ever had the blue pencil on that. i also had quite a lot of exposure to article iii, which i think dealt with subpoenas and contempt of the subpoenas if memory serves. >> yes. >> and i remember reading the different versions of the documents, where it is white house would have erased the incriminating material on most copies, but one of them got through, and needless to say, that infuriated everybody on the staff. >> were you -- did you participate in the decision

about retranscribing the tapes because the concern was the white house transcripts were just not usable or not thorough enough? >> i was not a decisionmaker, but it was clear to me, having listened to both versions from the white house and the perfected versions, that that was absolutely true. later, i became a federal prosecutor, and, you know, we would expend a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on those transcripts and have the jury listen to the tape and have the transcript at the same time, and the defense would always scream bloody murder and said that's not what that word says, and i became a civil litigator, same thing. the transit of a tape is a huge forensic development. and whoever made that decision, i think it was probably john dohr, bert jenner, and joe woods, they were absolutely right. >> how valuable were the materials that the watergate special prosecution force handed over?

>> on the development of the watergate conspiracy? i assume they were very valuable but that wasn't really my hunt. i was not an article i man. >> okay. what's the story with bert jenner and he sort of changes positions? was he -- was he forced out by the -- by the minority -- the minor leaders? >> i don't know about forced out. i mean, he was one of the prominent lawyers in the united states, the founder of jenner and block, the great chicago firm. so a person like myself, having begun to an ivy league law school, inspiring to be a kicker litigation department, sky high as far as i was concerned. he viewed the view pretty early on the president was going to be impeached. i remember him saying that to me and a couple other people in a car in march. that was not yet in the newspaper i think.

he got there pretty quickly and he and dohr spent a lot of time together, i think. and he would come and make presentations to the republican members. but i don't think they ever felt at ease with him. i remember at one point he was testifying and i think it was dell latter from ohio that said, you say that, mr. jenner, but i don't have to take your word for that. i saw the report you just filed about how prostitution should be legalized and that's not binding on me anymore than what you are saying right now and then one of the democratic members said, i hope the member from ohio reflects on what he said. dell latter did not need to reflect on what he said. but that's an example of the happy camaraderie on the committee. >> was there some tension between garrison and bert jenner? >> absolutely. i think so. sam was considerably more conservative. he approached this -- i won't say as a -- entirely as a

partisan, but his view at the beginning was, listen, if the president of the united states is going to be impeached and removed from office, somebody got to give me a pretty dang good reason or we're going to be a banana republic. he had deep relationships with some of the conservative republican wing on the committee, and i don't think bert jenner did. both of them tried very, very hard to be professional about it. but was there tension? yeah, there was tension. >> hadn't jenner worked for spiro agnew? >> i forgot that if that was true. >> did you play any role of shaping information? the big books that were handed to the committee? >> again, not the article i watergate conspiracy, but, yeah, i may have had a role in some of the other stuff?

>> the question i have for you, since you were working on the legal side, did you come to the understanding that this procedure was like a grand jury? there was some question as to whether mr. st. clair could be there and cross-examine. >> right. >> and that would be part of -- and then i guess the issue was in a grand jury the defendant's counsel is not there. >> most grand juries. some states by statute permitted defense counsel. >> is this one of the sort of discussions that you -- >> yeah, there were a lot of arguments about whether the standard here was probable cause. what's that, 4 out of 9? was it preponderance which is 5 out of 9. reasonable doubt? >> just to help the people watching and me, too, you mean five out of the nine jurors, right? >> no, no. percentage likelihood. a grand jury, 4 out of 9 chance,

that's probable cause. and then different types of legal proceedings, there are all types of different standards of proof required. another one would be preponderance in a civil case, 5 out of 9 or 6 out of 10, however you like. there's another standard in fraud cases. the standard is clear and convincing evidence and that's loosely translated as 7 out of 9. and then there's beyond a reasonable doubt which is sometimes translated as 9 out of 10. so you know, the people who wanted the president to be impeached said we don't have to prove this thing, this is probable cause. and others said this is a rather important proceeding, if we're going to send the guy who is president to the senate to get removed from office, u.s. a little bit more -- a little bit more important than a speeding ticket and maybe the standard should be a little bit different. and i can remember doing a good

bit of legal research on all of those things, and analogizing this to various different kinds of proceedings. but the fact is, there's almost no judicial proceeding which is analogous. this is quintessentially legislative proceeding, and that's why i say ultimately the check is political. it's not -- not some statute, it's not some rule. sure, there's high crimes and misdemeanors but you can put whatever water in to that vessel you care to. >> how useful was the johnson precedent? >> i thought johnson was very useful. and there was a 1934 case involving a judge i think called willis ritter which was also useful to me. >> in the end, by the way, on article ii which is the one you said you worked on, thought about a little bit, did you reach four, five, six or nine out of ten in the end? >> on the agency abuse? >> yeah.

in your own mind. >> well, it was pretty clear he'd done it because i listened to the tapes. the question, is too much potpourri jammed into the glass jar? a single cognizable offense. the evidence behind that, a lot of evidence in the watergate case. that was just there. >> the question is -- >> on tape. >> how many times does a president have to do it before it's too many? is one enough? if you have one instance that you prove. >> yeah. i mean. if the president said once, well, maybe we could encourage the cia to get involved here because that would maybe dissuade the fbi or complicate their efforts, even once if it was to dissuade the fbi in a case that was aimed at the president's breastplate, that might be enough. slight perjury and perjury prosecution takes on the color of the underlying offense here.

in that case, i think, the obstruction takes on the color of the underlie offense. and if you didn't have the underlying evidence, then you would say this is too artificial. >> before the vote, did you sense that there would be bipartisan support for some of these articles? before the votes on the three, on the articles. >> yeah. i'm trying to remember the timing. but yeah. it was clear there would be some bipartisan support. some republicans going along. there was a very dramatic moment i remember involving chuck wiggins, and i think it was when the smoking gun tape was played the smoking gun tape was played which was june 1972. not sure when this meeting occurred. but there was a die-hard group of perhaps nine or ten republicans with the president all the way, and their legal leader was chuck wiggins who became an appellate judge in california i think. a very learned, scholarly man.

he made arguments like you made an election, so you cannot argue this. pretty legalistic. but -- so, someone brought in the tape of the smoking gun tape to play for these diehards and they played it and, you know, the nine diehards sort of realized they had been played for fools. i heard it referred to as a draining effort. and if anyone had been drained, they had. and chuck wiggin, ultimate strong silent type burst into tears. >> i've got to situate this because the supreme court doesn't rule that these have to be turned over until july 29th after the vote. so the committee listened to this tape after -- this would have been after the votes had been taken. so they listened to the june 23rd '72 tape after the supreme -- not before -- couldn't have been before the supreme court proceeding because the president wouldn't have turned it over.

>> i would have said that the supreme court ordered that the tapes had to go over sometime in may. maybe a few tapes. no, july 29th? that's ten days before he resigns. >> yeah. >> maybe that meeting was in that interval. >> oh, my goodness. that must have been very powerful. did you have an a-ha moment when you were going through the materials? as you have said, you -- >> well, listening to the tapes. >> do you remember? do you remember was that -- may, june? it would have been -- do you remember when you listened to the tapes? >> no. but it was conversations between the president and haldeman and president and ehrlichman and john dean had a bit part in some of them. and i thought, boy, everyone keeps their voice down in the oval office. no screaming and ranting and raving. on the other hand, what's being said is pretty amazing. >> tell us about john dohr, working with him.

>> he was a dreamboat. dreamboat. he was just so sort of apple pie good. and, you know, i knew that he -- he made a real effort not to socialize with any of his democratic friend in washington. he was quite a good friend with ethel kennedy. at the time, i spent time at hickory hill. and she said, that john dohr, he won't even return my telephone calls. it's really awful. one time, john took exception to the fact that i think it was i had written a memo for mr. hutchison of michigan, the ranking member, at the request of sam garrison, and i think sam asked me to deliver it to mr. hutchison and john said, i didn't know about this.

so i got caught in the middle on that. and i was kind of in the middle since i was on both sides. i had a lot of different jobs, law and politics. i've been house liberal and a conservative administration witness. the ed meese justice department in the '80s and a house conservative and liberal administration, witnessed the nixon impeachment. and i don't like either one. would rather be right in the middle of the road administration. had to get my own administration. >> tell us about working with hillary rodham. >> very close relationship. very decent. she's just a very decent person. and if i recall correctly on the occasion when i got in the middle and john dohr himself got frowney faced with me, which he shouldn't have, by the way. i was doing my duty. i think hillary intervened and defended me on that, and i've never forgotten that. >> frowny face?

he got frowny faced? >> yeah, he did. he said, i should have known about this. how did this happen? >> tell us about what happens -- you were -- you were going to tell us the story of what happened after this experience. years later. >> well, you know, this was the beginning of a lifelong career in litigation and politics from me. i went back to my law firm, transferred from the corporate department to litigation. ran for state attorney general in 1978 because i was so obsessed with the investigative possibilities of grand juries and thought that the ag's office was not doing as much as it could have. i was absolutely creamed in that one. but then when reagan was elected, i was, you know, a republican who knew how to try a case. so i was appointed u.s. attorney, and then had a lot of

public corruption cases there. went to washington as head of the criminal vest division, went back to massachusetts, ran for governor and won. but before that happened, i was practicing law as a litigator, minding my own business in a philadelphia hotel room, preparing a witness for somebody. and 25 years after that -- i'm sorry. after that happened, 25 years after the watergate case, after the impeachment, i get a call from john podesta, who was then president clinton's chief of staff. and i had known him through the clinton white house, president clinton and i had been friendly as governors and he nominated me to be ambassador to mexico. so it was during a couple of months i spent a lot of time in the white house with john podesta and rahm emanuel. and other senior members of the staff. he calls me up in 1999 and says looks like they are going to impeach my guy and hearings in the house.

nearest we can tell, there's a couple of guys in the country that know a lot about constitutional law of impeachment of a president. the other is disqualified about political interest. you have to testify as an expert witness for the defense on the law. which i was happy to do and did. >> tell us about that experience, just doing it? >> well, i think i went in with a bunch of other former u.s. attorneys who were also republicans. it was a pretty impressive panel. and i had the additional background of knowing the law of impeachment, and i said sex is not an impeachable offense. it just isn't. it has to be something that touches and concerns the office or use of patient of power. this is a nonstarter as a matter of constitutional law, and they said, well, what about perjury? you brought a lot of cases when you were a prosecutor in boston.

yes, but as i said earlier, a perjury prosecution partakes of the color of an underlying offense. i once prosecuted a guy for perjury for denying he had been in boston on november 28, 1981. why bring that case? that was the day of the great lindh fire that almost burned down the city of lindh. he was a known torch, arsonist, and he claimed to have been in florida. but an agent for atf, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, found his fingerprints on a ticket at the delta warehouse in atlanta and proved he had come up and flown back to tampa. so that's a perjury case. maybe it's kintd of like the al capone income tax evasion case. you're really getting at something else, and you would never prosecute somebody for perjury for falsely denying they had a tryst with some lady of