provisions list to the university of missouri's special collections. the stories behind eight miniature babablonian tablets. >> at one time this was called the bloodiest 47 acres in america. also, walk back through history in the halls of the missouri state capitol and governor's mansion. once a month we explore the histories across america. this weekend from jefferson city. saturday at noon on c-span 2 and 3. with congress away on the fourth of july recess, we're featuring american history tv in prime time. tonight, oral history interviews with congressional staff charged with investigating president nxen.

we'll now hear from bernard nussb nussbaum. this is the first of two parts. it's just over an hour. >> i'm director of the richard nixon library museum. it's october 1st, 2011. we're in new york city. thank you for doing this. >> glad to be here. so to help the viewer understand 1974 view, let's go back and tell us about how you became a lawyer. >> i was born in 1937. i was born inman hath tan. my parents were immigrants.

first in the family to come to the united states. i was the first child born in the united states. i grew up on the lower ets. which was primarily a poor neighborhood. populated by jews and others at the time. i went to new york city public schools. i graduated from stiverson high school in 1954. i was the first of my family to attend college. i did well. i became editor in chief of the

college daily newspaper. and then i went to harvard law school. at the end of my third year in law school. kennedy who is now in the supreme court, who was in my class so i knew these people a long time ago. after law school, i didn't work but i received an award. i came back to the united states at the age of 25. i decided i want to be a trial lawyer. there was a new u.s. attorney. john kennedy was just elected president a short time before.

and he offered me a job as an assistant u.s. attorney. it was unusual to get a job out of law school. so i was 25 years old when i obtained that job. and i started it when i returned from the trip around the world. and i started that in 1962. and i worked in the u.s. attorney's office from 1962 to 1966, prosecuting criminal cases. i took six months out to serve in the united states army reserves, which i did during that period. and i got to know him fairly well. he was my boss at the time. it was an office of prosecutors. and you really learned to deal with judges and juries and deal with factual presentations and

factual gathering and investigations. i started a firm my friend started. e joined that in 1966. and i've been with that firm for 45 years. from 1966 to today, other than leaving on a couple of occasions. one, which was watergate. the other to go to the white house in 1992, 1993. so i joined the firm and i became a lawyer at lipton. and i became a private practitioner. i ran for office in 1968.

i ran for the state assembly in 1968 in a primary in brooklyn, where i lived at the time. so i moved with my wife and three children. and i moved to new york at that time. i was his campaign manager in 1970. elizabeth had worked in lipton for a short time when i came in. she was there for a short time. so that's how i met her. she had left lochtel-lipton and went to the government to work for lindsay. and then she went to politics. she left government to go into

politics. and she was attacked legally, claiming she didn't really live in brooklyn. and she asked me to represent her in that case. and we prevailed. her parents testified. but we won the case in 1970. so she was solidified in politics. and i tried at the the brooklyn courts. i was the trial lawyer in that case. and then two years later she decided to run for congress. she ran for congress against a long-term congressman named emanuel seller, who was in congress for many years. he was the chairman of the house

judiciary committee. nobody thought she had a chance. but she ran, and she won by 600 votes against seller in the primary. then they brought a lawsuit from her claiming she stole the election. there was fraud. ridiculous charges. she was an outsider who pulled it off by campaigning very hard and being very attractive. i had a summer vacation plan. my wife wasn't too happy about it. we took a cabin in maine, which i never got to. but i did represent her. and in a very tough fight, we won.

so we sustained her victory at that time. which i'm very proud of, and she was very happy about. that had an interesting impact that we didn't know in 1972, but we know now looking back. he was going to step down as chairman of the judiciary committee. peter rodino ultimately became chairman during the impeachment proceedings involving richard nixon, and he performed enormously well. i'm sure in these interviews you'll hear about rodino. he just died a few years ago. he lived well into his 90s. but he had the right temperament. even though he had been attacked as a party hack and things like that, he really performed at a very high level. we wonder, no one can tell for sure how seller would have performed but seller was a very partisan person. you know, come from the brooklyn organization. he was an able guy in many ways. i don't want to deprecate seller but it would have been a

different impeachment proceeding looking back and most people also think. so that in a funny way, although i ultimately was involved in the impeachment proceedings, what i did two years before, elizabeth holtzman did two years before probably had as great impact on the proceeding as anything we did in 1974. holtzman turned out as a congresswoman to be on the house judiciary committee and she was part of the impeachment proceedings and an important part of the impeachment proceedings. but i think her victory two years before and my sustaining of that victory as a lawyer had probably a greater impact and what whatever she did or i did two years later when we were part of it. >> you're being a bit modest. there's a little courtroom drama in your victory two years before. >> oh.

>> it's a great story. >> well, there's a lot of courtroom drama in that one. no, it was -- the brooklyn organization really wanted to win that case and there was a -- and one of the -- the judge was a judge named dominec rinaldi who was an old-time judge who came up through the organization which most of the judges did at that time. and what i did in that case was i knew it would be tough to win below in the trial court. i was hopeful i would win in the appellate court hope to i lost the trial court. what i ended up with doing with people in my firm was to submit a brief to him at the beginning of the trial, a very lengthy brief, sort of summarizing all the law which made it -- which showed how really judges shouldn't upset elections except in the most unusual circumstances. i really told the judge in the beginning of the trial this is the brief i'm going to submit to the court of appeals. i said it in a nice way and i got on with the judge because it's my job as a trial lawyer to try to get on with the judge.

so i really showed him that, you know, i was going to take this all the way. that was a surprise and exactly what i was going to say to the court of appeals. and then we started trying the case. the organization had very good lawyers. they really fought very hard in this case. the lawyer who opposed me in this case ultimately became a judge, which is not surprising. but he was a very good lawyer. it was a hard fight. but i was fighting back very hard. they were accusing us of fraud and things like that which was ridiculous. we were the outsiders. we were the reformers at one point i said to demonstrate beat had no control over any processes at all, i'm going to call the chairman of the brooklyn organization. the whole courtroom started shaking. everybody in that courtroom had gotten his job through esposito. they all started screaming basically. so i withdrew -- i was getting along with some of them at this point so i withdrew my request to subpoena esposito. then surprisingly, the judge judge below justice rinaldi ruled in our favor. and then when i argued in the appellate division, his law

secretary came to watch me argue and told me the judge had just been the subject of an article in "the village voice" i guess it was by jack neufield listing the ten worst judges in new york and they listed rinaldi first. he asked me if i saw that article. i said i did. i thought it was a terrible thing. i thought the judge was fine. he really tried a good case. he said, well, the judge, he says, well, i'm glad you think that. the judge thinks that, too. he thinks this is a very bad article and he would like to sue "the village voice" for libel and would like you to represent him. it's one of the biggest compliments i've gotten as a lawyer the judge asking me to represent him. i backed out. i said i can't do that. i still feel guilty about that to this day. the judge did get a lawyer and they did sue for libel and the case went to the court of appeals and the court of appeals ultimately determined not that there was immunity, that "the village voice" -- the judge lost

in the effect in the court of appeals his libel suit. but it was a very interesting by play of that case. but the point is in terms of watergate and in terms of the impeachment that the house judiciary committee had a different leader than it otherwise would have had. >> i just also like the story of how you changed your whole strategy when you heard -- >> oh. the judicial complexity here. at the same time we were fighting to preserve holtzman's victory against seller, she won by 600 votes against seller, there was another case going on at the same time. ala lowenstein who was a prominent liberal democrat, political reformer on the same political side as holtzman, he had run against a congressman named rooney, john rooney. and he lost by 900 votes.

in other words, rooney won by 900 votes. holtzman won by 600 votes. rooney, rather, lowenstein brought a suit to try to upset the rooney victory. so what we have here is lowenstein trying to upset a 900-vote victory and seller trying to upset a 600-vote victory. so even though we were on the same side politically, we were on the opposite sides legally. i'm making the claim in the holtzman case basically that you can't upset elections unless there's overwhelming proof. you just can't. this is all nonsense about irregularities and things like that and that was the thrust of my brief in effect and the thrust of my witnesses. i called a statistician from columbia law school to point out that the art to the election would have changed because of certain alleged regularities

were greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. i had all sorts of testimony like that. i'm saying you can never overturn elections although certain elections you can. lowenstein is arguing you can overturn elections because he's arguing against rooney. so we had different sides legally although we're on the same side politically. so i win in the lower court. holtzman wins in the lower court and rooney wins in the lower court. the election's not set aside. then we go to the appellate division and the appellate division sustains the decision below the holtzman election is not set aside, the victory is not set aside and the rooney victory is not set aside. so that's the second level. then we go to the court of appeals which is the highest court in the state. i think i'm sort of home now. i won in the court which is the most political below. i won in the appellate division

which is not that political. but you know. now i'm in the court of appeals which should be the least political court over the circumstances here. and at the same time, i'm winning rooney is winning and lowenstein is losing, too, which i sort of expected. if i can win. so i'm now in the court of appeals and we're sitting there arguing in the court of appeals this major case although i'm fairly confident. i have an argument planned out obviously along the lines i argued earlier before. and the first case they hear is the lowenstein-rooney case. and lowenstein's lawyer gets up to argue that elections should be set aside which is contrary to the position i'm going to take in the next case and he's treated sort of very nicely by the court of appeals and then rooney's lawyer gets up and says you can't set aside elections

making similar kinds of arguments to the kinds i made and the court is the all over him questioning him very hard and saying why can't they do this and wasn't there this error and that error. it's true rooney was the organization candidate. low enstein wasn't. they said, no, we can set aside the election. that's the thrust of some of the questions. he's getting a really hard time. and i realize -- you know, i realize if they're going to go in that direction in that case which is the 900-vote victory, what will they do in my case where there's only a 600-vote victory? so sitting there, and this is what you were alluding to, i realize i have to throw out my whole argument and i start writing notes to myself and i get up and the first thing i say you just heard that case which we discussed whether you should set aside that 900 vote victory. now you're hearing my case which is a 600-vote victory. my case is not that the case. there are 12 differences between my case and that case. i start listing one after another. one of the main differences is we were, of course, the insurgence, the reform, and rooney was the machine was behind rooney.

but i listed -- that happened in this case, didn't happen in my case. so i started listing. i started distinguishing ourselves from the other case fearing that we would be dragged down because of their attitude in the other case. but the court of appeals also gave me a tough time. i didn't get a tough time in the appellate division but in the court of appeals. and then i sat down and i didn't know what the result was going to be. i was questioned. i fought back and the way rooney's lawyer was questioned. then we went back to the hotel to await the decisions. in those cases the decisions come down right away because the elections take place shortly thereafter. if you had another election. it would have to take place shortly thereafter. about five hours later we're sitting in the hotel, the decision came down. the rooney victory was upset by a vote of 4-3 and the holtzman 600 victory was sustained. we won by a vote of 5-2. there were two dissents. the first judges that dissented. and that was -- and the circumstances it was an amazing

thing that we could sustain a 600-vote victory and rooney could not sustain a 900-vote victory. now there were differences in the cases as i argued to the court and that had this great result that holtzman went up to congress and seller was no longer chairman of the house judiciary committee and the rest is history. >> how do you get hired by john doar? >> how do i get hired by john doar? i got to go back even before being hired by john. as i said i was an assistant u.s. attorney and i went to harvard law school and i met a lot of people obviously at harvard who i knew very well, one of whom was archie cox who was one of my professor at agency and phil highman who was a contemporary of mine in law school. he was a year ahead of me. he was in scalia's class. and i get a call from the special counsel, the independent counsel, the special prosecutor which had been appointed as a result of watergate. this is prior to the impeachment proceedings. any impeachment proceedings. this, of course, the special

counsel archie cox is ultimately fired and that results in the firestorm that causes the house judiciary committee impeachment inquiry. so i get a call six, seven, eight nine months before from phil highman i think i got the call, some senior member of the staff who i knew from law school. they called to ask me to come down to consider joining their staff to leaving my law firm and joining their staff as a prosecutor on the special prosecutor staff. i turn it down on the phone. i'm now a partner in a law firm. i have a wife and children. i'm doing fairly well. i live in the suburbs. i'm working very hard. and i don't want to be a prosecutor again. at this point in my life. i've been there, done that kind of thing. i tell him that on the phone and i just turn him down, an opportunity to join that staff. i was interested. obviously it was a significant thing. the special prosecutor was appointed but it's an institution i'm not a fan of as later on although i thought it did a great job in that thing

and it was proper to have it in that situation. so i turn it down. then, of course, lifetime -- some time goes by and cox is fired in the saturday night massacre, the famous saturday night massacre. and then the house judiciary committee starts indicating that it's going to conduct an impeachment inquiry regarding president nixon, and they appoint john doar as chief counsel. they're going to set up a special staff, not going to use their regular staff and appoint him as chief counsel. so john calls me. i get a call from john doar asking me -- this is how i remember it, asking me if i would meet him because he would like me to join -- to join his staff. he wants to meet me first. and i say no on the telephone. i say i've got a similar call months ago. i don't know if i said that to

him but this is what was in my mind. i said i'm here. i'm really not prepared to leave. i understood this was no longer a prosecutor thing. this is the house judiciary committee so i sort of turned it down. the next day, i get a call from robin morgenthau. now my old boss who now happens to be at my firm. at 92 he retired as district attorney, has now sort of counsel to our law firm in new york but this 50 years after he hired me, he's now at our firm. this is 1973 i'm talking about, late 1973. i'm talking about, the saturday night massacre was october '73. so this was after that, a month after that, november 1973, early december 1973. so morgenthau calls me. i don't know morgenthau. i know him fairly well from -- he's a guy who was a wonderful u.s. attorney, wonderful district attorney. great man.

but thinks the only job in the world worth having is working for him. a lot of people are like that, you know. so -- and i know that. so because he tries to get people to work for him and he got very good people to work for him. great staffs. that's why he's had such a great career. so he calls me up the next day and says i was just talking to john doar and i recommended you for this thing as did some other people to doar, he said, and doar told me you weren't interested. i think you should think about this. this sort of shocked me because i never thought morgenthau would ever recommend anybody working for anybody else other than working for him. i really think you should think about this. then he said something i never forgot. he said, you've got to think about this in two different ways it may make it more attractive to you. number one, this is an impeachment. this is history. and how often do you get a

chance to participate in an event, an historical event? and number two, just as important, it's short. how long can you keep a president hanging? you're not going to be gone for so long. you're not going to be -- this is not a career thing. you're not going to be gone for years, you know. i can understand not going to a prosecutor's office. it's history and it's short. now doar's going to call you again or somebody's going to call you again, and i really think you should consider that. i hung up the phone and i really thought about that. it struck me that he was right. it was history, and it was short. my partners weren't very happy. this firm was not all that big at the time. we were pretty successful but i did get a call and i agreed to go down and see doar. and i went down to washington and i met with doar and he was very attractive. we talked about how this thing would proceed, and it sounded very important and very

exciting. a real challenge to a lawyer. and then i went back and i was enthusiastic about it. once i met him, it was a foregone conclusion i wanted to do it. i talked to my wife who was wonderful. we had three little children, one was 8, one was 5, one was 2 and i was going to go off now on this thing. which was going to be hard for us. it turned out to be hard. that was a tough year in a family sense. i was away a lot that year. it was a very hard year. but it worked out. and i had to talk to my partners who most of them were understanding. there was only a few partners. they thought i was sort of crazy to go off. i resigned from my firm because this is a very sensitive thing.

my firm was not as well-known as it is today. it was not as strong as it is today. it was successful, it was -- so i resigned. some people in the impeachment didn't have to resign. i resigned because i felt if things went badly on this impeachment and who knows what kind of attacks we would be under and there were attacks to some extent, i just didn't want it to hurt the firm. i wasn't even guaranteed i could come back to the firm under that circumstance but i said i just wanted to do this. this was a great challenge. my wife was supportive. although it turned out to be a hard year. she said -- and i went and i did it. and my partners were understanding, too. even though they were reluctant to see me do this. but i did it. so i went down and i did it and that's how i got hired. >> did you recruit any of the staff? >> i was involved -- i was involved in sort of vetting and discussing with doar certain people such as evan davis, for example. you know, and i was supportive of him hiring certain people who sort of came along. i tried to induce him to hire certain additional people which he decided he didn't really want to do. actually, people who turned out to be very prominent later on. one is pierre laval who's now in the 2nd circuit and the other is tony sifton who became chief

judge of the eastern district of new york, both federal judges. sifton unfortunately died a few years ago. laval is still a judge in the 2nd circuit. doar decided -- i don't want to overstate this. i wanted more litigators and more trial lawyers for this thing. i envisioned a trial in the senate. i wanted guys, my contemporaries. doar, you know, he had me and he had some other people. he had joe woods, dick cates. he felt he had enough people along those lines, and therefore, he passed up the opportunity to hire laval and to hire sifton but somehow their careers managed to do okay without coming down to us there. so i did try to get him to do that. he was more comfortable with the staff that he sort of put together. a lot of the younger people we had such as hillary rodham and maureen who was not a lawyer at the time and it worked out. i mean, he was -- his comfort level was important. he had me. and i was sort of a both very

useful to him and an irritant at the same time. but i was very aggressive. i was 37 years old. i was a trial lawyer. i had been a trial lawyer. and we had disputes from time to time as to how things should happen. you know, how things should proceed. when i think back, he was right most of the time, and i was wrong most of the time. he wanted to be -- he understood that we couldn't come off as prosecutorial. he understood -- this is very important. he really understood and rodino did, too. i understood it to some extent but less so. he was -- i understood what he was saying and i sort of agreed with what he was saying but i still wanted to be more aggressive in terms of the investigation. he was very cautious how we should investigate this thing. he understood what the papers we'd be writing if we sent out investigators. he basically wanted to do it in a loke