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Looks like we're moving at about the pace our teachers were!!!
Lawmakers Recall Nixon Inquiry
By GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It has been 24 years since they gathered in Room 2141 of the
Rayburn House Office Building, before a crowd perched on folding chairs, in muggy July
heat that strained the air conditioners.
Members of the 1974 House Judiciary Committee that began impeachment proceedings
against President Nixon still recall scattering on a false report that a kamikaze plane was
headed their way. Some remember being pelted by stones or greeted with death threats
on visits back home.
''It was nerve-wracking and it was stressful,'' recalls former Rep. Delbert Latta, R-Ohio,
now 78.
Today, most of the 38 members of that committee have died or retired. A few are
wrapping up careers in private industry. Others, like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott
and Defense Secretary William Cohen, continue to hold levers of political power.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is the only member from 1974 who remains on the
committee today as it considers whether to open a formal impeachment inquiry into
President Clinton's conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair.
''I want to tell you how different it is,'' Conyers said last week, complaining that the
committee's majority Republicans were pushing ahead against the president with partisan
zeal. ''The Constitution has not been served.''
House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that the ''intensity of focus'' this time is far
different from 1974, but that the committee would try to follow the pattern established by
committee Chairman Peter Rodino, D-N.J., during Watergate to reduce partisan tensions.
''There will be an effort to draft proposed rules for an inquiry that clearly will follow the
Rodino model from 1973-74,'' Gingrich said. ''And we'll try to do it in a very bipartisan
way.''
With unanimity, former committee members warn that the public will quickly lose faith in
their successors' work if it becomes overtly politicized.
A few also complain about the public release of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's
report and of the president's videotaped grand jury testimony.
''It smacks of sexual McCarthyism,'' said former Rep. Edward Mezvinsky, D-Iowa. ''It
almost has the earmarks on its face of being a blood sport.''
Much as they were at the start of their proceedings in 1974, the committee members are
also deeply divided along party lines about whether there are grounds for impeachment
against this president.
''I don't think the conduct articulated (in the Starr report), even if you accept it all as true,
constitutes impeachable offenses,'' said former Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman of
New York, a 57-year-old lawyer. ''What the president did was reprehensible, but it
involved private acts.''
Former Rep. Wiley Mayne, R-Iowa, disagrees.
''I think that there is a similarity in the delaying tactics that were employed by the White
House both in '74 and during this year,'' said Mayne, still practicing law at 81. He recalled
that the committee's impeachment article on obstruction of justice by Nixon ''included a
charge that the president had made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of
deceiving the people of the United States.''
From both sides, there is a sadness that the country has reached this juncture.
''I never dreamed or thought it would happen again,'' said former Democratic Rep. Joshua
Eilberg of Pennsylvania, now 77 and retired. ''I thought it would have such an impact on
the population that we would never approach anything like it again.''
The committee's job then, as it is now, was to review the evidence against the president
and decide whether he should face impeachment proceedings in the full House. In Nixon's
case, he was accused of crimes stemming from the 1972 Watergate break-in.
After months of preliminary hearings, Rodino convened the committee on July 24, 1974,
to take up proposed articles of impeachment.
Three days later, the panel voted 27-11 in favor of the first article: obstruction of justice.
On July 29, it passed the second, abuse of power. The following day, it approved the third
and final article, defiance of committee subpoenas.
Nixon's fate was sealed on Aug. 5 when he was forced to surrender tape-recorded
conversations in which he is heard ordering the CIA to obstruct and halt the FBI
investigation of the break-in. He resigned on Aug. 9 rather than face almost certain ouster.
Rodino, now 89, has refused to say if Clinton committed an impeachable offense, but said
the proceedings must be handled with sensitivity.
''I believe that this is such a big matter, to even consider the question of impeachment, that
we must hesitate, we must deliberate and say to ourselves this doesn't only affect the fate
of the president, but the fate of the nation, the fate of democracy, the fate of our
constitutional process,'' Rodino told National Public Radio on Sept. 9.
Viewing the current situation through the prism of what happened with Nixon, former Rep.
Thomas Railsback, R-Ill., said it was premature for the committee to be talking about
impeaching Clinton or taking the lesser step of censuring him.
''I think there has to be hearings, not necessarily on impeachment, but whether there is
sufficient information to bring an impeachment proceeding,'' said Railsback, 66.
AP-NY-09-24-98 1545EDT
newsday.com
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