-Caveat Lector-
HILLARY'S WATERGATE SCANDAL
By JERRY ZEIFMAN
She violated House and committee rules by
disclosing confidential information to
unauthorized persons. IN December 1974, as
general counsel and chief of staff of the
House Judiciary Committee, I made a
personal evaluation of Hillary Rodham (now
Mrs. Clinton), a member of the staff we had
gathered for our impeachment inquiry on
President Richard Nixon. I decided that I
could not recommend her for any future
position of public or private trust.
Why? Hillary's main duty on our staff has
been described by her authorized biographer
as "establishing the legal procedures to be
followed in the course of the inquiry and
impeachment." A number of the procedures
she recommended were ethically flawed.
And I also concluded that she had violated
House and committee rules by disclosing
confidential information to unauthorized
persons.
Hillary had conferred personally with me
regarding procedural rules. I advised her
that Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter
Rodino, House Speaker Carl Albert,
Majority Leader Tip O'Neill and I had
previously agreed not to advocate anything
contrary to the rules already adopted and
published for that Congress. I quoted Mr.
O'Neill's statement that: "To try to change
the rules now would be politically divisive.
It would be like trying to change the
traditional rules of baseball before a World
Series."
Hillary assured me that she had not drafted
and would not advocate any such rules
changes. I soon learned that she had lied:
She had already drafted changes, and
continued to advocate them.
In one written legal memorandum, she
advocated denying President Nixon
representation by counsel. This, though in
our then-most-recent prior impeachment
proceeding, the committee had afforded the
right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas.
I also informed Hillary that the Douglas
impeachment files were available for public
inspection in our offices. I later learned that
the Douglas files were then removed from
our general files without my permission,
transferred to the offices of the impeachment
inquiry staff, and were no longer accessible
to the public.
The young Ms. Rodham had other bad
advice about procedures, arguing that the
Judiciary Committee should neither 1) hold
any hearings with or take the depositions of
any live witnesses, nor 2) conduct any
original investigation of Watergate, bribery,
tax evasion, or any other possible
impeachable offense of President Nixon -
but to rely instead on prior investigations
conducted by other committees and agencies.
The committee rejected Ms. Rodham's
recommendations: It agreed to allow
President Nixon to be represented by
counsel and to hold hearings with live
witnesses.
Hillary then advocated that the official rules
of the House be amended to deny members
of the committee the right to question
witnesses. This unfair recommendation was
rejected by the full House. (The committee
also vetoed her suggestion that it leave the
drafting of the articles of impeachment to her
and her fellow special staffers.)
The recommendations advocated by Hillary
were apparently initiated or approved by
Yale Law School professor Burke Marshall
- in violation of committee and House rules
on confidentiality. They were also
advocated by her immediate supervisors,
Special Counsel John Doar and Senior
Associate Special Counsel Bernard
Nussbaum, both of whom had worked under
Marshall in the Kennedy Justice Department.
It was not until two months after Nixon's
resignation that I first learned of still another
questionable role of Ms. Rodham. On Sept.
26, 1974, Rep. Charles Wiggins, a
Republican member of the committee, wrote
to ask Chairman Rodino to look into a
troubling set of events. That spring, Wiggins
and other committee members had asked
"that research should be undertaken so as to
furnish a standard against which to test the
alleged abusive conduct of Richard Nixon."
And, while "no such staff study was made
available to the members at any time for
their use," Wiggins had just learned that such
a study had been conducted - at committee
expense - by a team of professors who
completed and filed their reports with the
impeachment-inquiry staff well in advance
of our public hearings.
The report was not made available to
members of Congress. But after the
impeachment-inquiry staff was disbanded, it
was published commercially and sold in
book stores.
Wiggins wrote that he was "especially
troubled by the possibility that information
deemed essential by some of the members in
their discharge of their responsibilities may
have been intentionally suppressed by the
staff during the course of our investigation."
On Oct. 3, Rodino wrote back: "Hillary
Rodham of the impeachment-inquiry staff
coordinated the work. ... After the staff
received the report it was reviewed by Ms.
Rodham, briefly by Mr. Labovitz and Mr.
Sack, and by Mr. Doar. The staff did not
think the manuscript was useful in its present
form."
On the charge of willful suppression, he
wrote: "That was not the case ... The staff
did not think the material was usable by the
committee in its existing form and had not
had time to modify it so it would have
practical utility for the members of the
committee. I was informed and agreed with
the judgment."
During my 14-year tenure with the House
Judiciary Committee, I had supervisory
authority over several hundred staff
members. With the exception of Ms.
Rodham, Doar and Nussbaum, I recommend
all of them for future positions of public and
private trust.
---
Jerry Zeifman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is the
author of "Without Honor: The Impeachment
of President Nixon and the Crimes of
Camelot," which describes the above
matters in more detail.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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