misuse of power by the fbi, the cia, the fact is he's a good president. isn't that a factor to be taken into account. he was a good president in foreign affairs, did very important things. he did the opening to china. he was hugely important in the arab-israeli war in 1973. don't you have to make a judgment about that as well? and the answer is yes. you really sort of do. but on the other hand, he did do all of these things that he really did abuse his powers as president, and against his political opponent and is contrary to our system of government. the answer to that is others have done similar things. to some extent. you know. but the fact is he sort of put it all together in a way nobody did it before. and you can't do that any more.

you know, that was a debate. garrison made interesting arguments and i think this was reflected in the agony of the republicans when i watched this. many of them thought he was a good overall good present. not only a president of their party but a good president. certainly? in foreign affairs and maybe even in domestic affairs. in some ways he was a good president. apparently didn't like me because i told you i mentioned a smk that he spoke. this is years later after i was in the white house with bill clinton he made some comments about me and my deputy and said in my book, he thought i was a tough shit and maybe i drove my deputy, vince foster to suicide, which was of course not true.

he was a wonderful man who unfortunately had a breakdown. president nixon was a very able guy. but he did what he did and we did what we had to do, and is the congress reaches a decision. >> sam garrison's office, was it close to yours? >> yeah, yeah. we were all -- we worked out of the congressional hotel. it was a very small space. we were constantly together. garrison was a good advocate. you know, for i don't believe he's still alive. he died. he was not old. he was no older than i was at the time. you should really -- well, you did track down some of them. bill weld i guess. but you should try to track down some of those republican staff members and see. in the end we were mostly on the same page.

which is an amazing feat. i know it was important at the time but i didn't understand how important. in this day and age impossible. i think it's impossible. >> what changed? >> the enormous partisanship. it even was when bill clinton was in the white house. when i was council to the president. it became worse and worse. there is no middle. there is no moderate republicans, moderate democrats but no moderate republicans. and the notion of people coming together to make a joint decision. that's why the country has all of the problems it has now. the economic situation. it's a big problem. then maybe it was -- historians can look back, one of the last

time that people can sort of come together. it's a tribute to i them keep saying we came together. and also what i'm proud of. i think i mentioned this before, if not in this interview. i thought there would be a historical backlash against the impeachment process, against the president nixon reservation because we forced him out of office, this was a partisan gang that put it all together. there was never, that back lash never came. nobody ever writes that somehow -- no meaningful position, i'm sure some have written, that somehow error was committed. this shouldn't have happened.

this was a president being driven out of office and he wouldn't. no respectable authorities have really said that. and that's another tribute to that process. i'm very proud of that too. i always thought history that's the way it will go. 20 years from now, in a moment of hysteria using the tapes we force the president out of office and shouldn't have done. nobody's ever said that. the decision is basically accepted by history. yes, this is the correct judgment. under those circumstances and those times. that's something look how the people look back at the clinton and so called impeachment. he was impeached. he was, but the house of representatives he was acquitted sort of by the senate but he was impeached. everybody looks at that as a joke. >> it's a joke, a misuse of the impeachment process. no punishment of the party that did that but it's a joke.

you look back at that as a joke, not as a legitimate process. but nobody looks back on -- most people don't. maybe some people do. but most people don't look back on watergate impeachment in 1974 and the ultimate resignation. the house judiciary committee voted on articles of impeachment and prior to he resigned because the senators went to him and said the articles can be voted out and the senate will probably vote to convict so he resigned. >> did you think that the lessons you learned in 1974 were useful or not in 1993-94? or had the world changed so much by then? >> no. in 1993-94 when i was in the white house, i was affected by what happened in '73-'74.

and this is of course also part of history right now and in various books. the office of the independent council is a very dangerous office. you know. it was conducted well in '73-'74, cox and jawarski did a good job, a fair job. it was the proper thing to do but it was a unique circumstance. at the time. there was you know, clearly evidence of significant abuses of power, we had the tapes ultimately. but normally, that is a dangerous office to exist for a president to have to face. when you start appointing independent counsel, the dynamic is such that you want to make a case.

when you only have one target and your representation sort of at stake you want to make a case. the impeachment process is the proper process. but the independent counsel is dangerous. you have to have a unique person to walk away. especially when the president's involved. so i was very wary and when i came into the white house in '93-94 of the institution of special prosecutor, the independent counsel. and with this outcry arose, in late 1993, when i was counsel to the president, after my deputy vince foster committed suicide, this whitewater, so called investment that president clinton and hillary clinton had made a long time ago, which they lost money on, that somehow there was some sort of corruption involved or guarantee

and then jim mcdougal and people -- had nothing to do with abuse of power, nothing, none of the same kind of stuff that happened in '73-74. and it was an outcry for independent counsel to investigate those arguments. ---acts. i was vehemently opposed to that. vehemently opposed. it was -- there was no 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 probay 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, stephanopolous 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.

the world would be different. 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 for many years, except in a most general way. made a speech about it 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 happen. 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 fight with my wife anymore. 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? no. 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 the 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 impeachment? >> 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 solely. 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 must be 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 impeachable, 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 testified before a grand jury, 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. in conducting the impeachment proceeding, 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. >> but there was a debate. >> there was a debate. >> i think there were some people who were saying he shouldn't have the right. >> he should present it. if there's enough for a quote, indictment or impeachment. both sides of the senate are entitled to whatever presentation they make. i didn't think that was a correct thing to do in the house. the whole country was looking at this. first we had secret