IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY Executive Session THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1974 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10: 25 a.m., in room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (chairman) presiding. Present: Representatives Rodino (presiding), Donohue, Brooks, Kastenmeier, Edwards, Hungate, Conyers, Eilberg, Waldie, Flowers, Mann, Sarbanes, Seiberling, Danielson, Drinan, Rangel, Jordan, Thornton, Holtzman, Owens, Mezvinsky, Hutchinson, McClory, Smith, Sandman, Railsback, Wiggins, Dennis, Fish, Mayne, Hogan, Butler, Cohen, Lott, Froehlich, Moorhead, Maraziti, and Latta. Impeachment inquiry staff present: John Doar, special counsel; Albert E. Jenner, Jr., special counsel to the minority; Samuel Garrison, deputy minority counsel; Bernard W. Nussbaum, senior associate. special counsel: Michael M. Conway, counsel; Richard H. Gill, counsel: Stephen A. Sharp, counsel; Gary W. Sutton, counsel. Committee staff present: Jerome M. Zeifman, general counsel; Garner J. Cline, associate general counsel; William P. Dixon, counsel; Franklin G. Polk, associate counsel; Arden B. Schell, assistant counsel; Michael W. Blommer, associate counsel; Allen Parker, counsel; and Dan Cohen, counsel. Also present: James D. St. Clair, special counsel to the President; John A. McCahill, assistant special counsel; and Malcolm J. Howard, assistant special counsel. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Before proceeding with the response by Mr. St. Clair, the Chair would like to make several announcements. Following the response by Mr. St. Clair, it is hoped that we may be able to take care of a few housekeeping matters that I think can be disposed of during this morning's session. I understand that these matters, such as the release and public indication of further materials, may be disposed of under the rules at this phase of the proceeding, but it is still a hearing and doesn't necessitate a meeting. Then there are several other matters that I would like to discuss with the members on a very informal basis, so I would hope that we would remain behind after Mr. St. Clair leaves, just to provide some information regarding some of the proposals that I have which I 41-018-75-pt. 3- 28 think are within the jurisdiction of the Chair to merely offer as proposals as to the procedures that are intended to be followed next week during the course of what we consider the debate on the resolution and consideration of any resolution which we may have before the committee as a committee. I might also add that at this time, the Rules Committee is meeting to consider a change in the rules of the House providing for the allowance or permission of live television to come into the proceedings, and any member that would like to go there to express himself one way or the other, I notify him for that reason. But I am advised that the leadership has scheduled this and it is before the Rules Committee this morning. So that in the event that such a rule is adopted and the House does then formally adopt that change in the rules of the House, then the committee could properly have before it, as has been expressed by some of the members, a desire to have a resolution which would permit live television to come in to telecast our proceedings. I mention this so that the members will know what is taking place. Now, before calling on Mr. St. Clair, Mr. Doar, you have a matter that I think is of some importance to us to know about and then following that, I think we will hear from Mr. St. Clair. Mr. DOAR. Mr. Chairman, I would like to report to the members of the committee with respect to the President's response to the subpena issued by the committee on the 24th day of June, returnable on the 2d of July and actually responded to because the President was out of the country, on the 12th day of July. Briefly to refresh the members' recollection, the subpena called for certain recorded conversations between the President and some of his key associates, particularly Mr. Colson, Mr. Haldeman, and Mr. Ehrlichman in the summer of 1971, and a conversation between the President and Mr. Petersen in April of 1973, and the President and Mr. Kleindienst in April of 1973. President Nixon declined to supply, produce the tape-recorded conversations or copies of the President's daily diaries which we requested in the subpenas dated June 24. The President had advised the committee theretofore that that would be his position with respect to Watergate and these recorded conversations dealt with the plumbers activity in the Ellsberg case in the summer of 1971. However, the position of the President was the same. There was no elaboration in the position and you have been furnished with a copy of the letter. With respect to the news summaries, the President did furnish a number of news summaries for the period March through June 1972, but the news summaries which were furnished were copies that didn't have any of the President's notes on them. The third matter that I wish to report to the committee about is we asked for certain documents in the files of a number of men in the White House, including Mr. Ehrlichman, and specifically, we asked for handwritten notes of Mr. Ehrlichman produced by the White House on the 5th and 6th of June to Judge Gesell in the case of United States v. Ehrlichman. On the 15th day of July, we received at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, at our office, a package of material from the Special Prosecutor's office. At about the same time on that day, or maybe a little earlier, I received personally from Mr. St. Clair a package of material. Examination of this material indicated that both sets of material were the handwritten notes of Mr. Ehrlichman for a period from June 17, 1971 through May 1973. The package that was delivered by the Special Prosector was apparently delivered to us by mistake. There had been an exchange of telephone calls between some representative of the White House and some representative of the Special Prosecutor's office, and as I understand it second hand, the White House person had asked that those notes or a Xerox copy of the notes be returned so that they could use them in preparing the material that the White House was going to submit to the committee. The instruction was misunderstood and the person at the Special Prosecutor's sent the notes to the committee. Well, the point of all this is that there are about twice as many blank pages on the material that was sent by Mr. St. Clair to the committee as there were on the material that was over in the Special Prosecutor's office. We have not had a chance to analyze all the material but to give the committee just a rough idea, we received from the White House 175 pages of material, 88 pages of which are blank, and we received the same set of material from the Special Prosecutor. It was 181 pages, 40 pages are blank. If you count the number of lines and notes in the material from the Special Prosecutors, there were 1,370 lines of notes and in this, what we received from the White House, there were 643 lines of notes. Now, our preliminary examination of these two sets of materials indicate that there was blanked out of the material furnished to the Judiciary Committee a considerable amount of material with respect to President Nixon's discussions with John Ehrlichman on the subject of the Ellsberg prosecution. There were also a number of other things eliminated. I call this to the committe's attention pursuant to the instruction of the Chairman and as soon as we can in a careful way, we will make this material available to the committee, what we think is the relevant material, and indicate where the relevant material had been excluded from the material which was furnished by the White House to the committee. Mr. McCLORY. Mr. Chairman, could I ask counsel this question? Do I understand that the material which you received from the Special Prosecutor, which apparently the committee received by mistake, will be included in the material that you will furnish to the members? Mr. DOAR. Oh, yes, sir. It is just so bulky that to furnish it all to you without some kind of analysis and guidance is just impossible. Mr. MCCLORY. And then also Mr. DOAR. I would say to the members that we do have three copies of that made and that both sets of it will be available for inspection by the members if they want to get an idea, just to go through it. Mr. McCLORY. Then the material that the committee members will get, we will get both versions? Mr. DOAR. That is correct. I wonder, really, whether the committee members would want me to make 38 copies of each version. That is an awful lot of Xeroxing. I would think that it would be practical if we had copies available for inspection. If the members want it, we, of course, can do that, but we would call attention of the committee members to the relevant portions of the material and indicate Mr. BROOKS. Will counsel yield? Mr. Chairman? Mr. McClory, do you ask to make that a part of the record? That is what you were doing, but you were just talking about Mr. McCLORY. I would be interested in having the relevant materials made a part of the record and made available to the committee members. I don't want to insist on having 38 copies Mr. DOAR. We will make it a part of the record, we do make it a part of the record, ask that it be made a part of the record. Mr. RAILSBACK. Mr. Chairman The CHAIRMAN. I think frankly that this item that is being called to our attention is very pertinent for the reason that here we have before us materials which were sent to us by the White House after we had subpenaed those items and the materials that were furnished to the prosecutor, but on examination-and I don't suggest that we in any way again attribute any motivation or anything of the sort, but on examination, there are a number of blank pages in the items-in the set of notes that we have received and I have examined some of the notes. I might say that on examination, a very cursory examination, I think that some of those matters are rather pertinent and relative to this inquiry. Yet they are not contained in the set of notes furnished to us, but they are contained in the set of notes which the Special Prosecutor has. And I think that this ought to be a matter that the committee ought to properly examine. Mr. McCLORY. But, Mr. Chairman, how are we going to get this? I want to look at this material. How am I going to look at it? Mr. DOAR. It is available to you over at the Mr. McCLORY. OK. Mr. DOAR. Or we could furnish it to you. Mr. McCLORY. That is satisfactory to me. Mr. BUTLER. I would like to ask counsel, were either one of these things accompanied by a covering letter? Mr. DOAR. The material that Mr. St. Clair gave to us was accompanied by a covering letter and the other material was accompanied by a covering letter. Mr. ST. CLAIR. Mr. Chairman Mr. BUTLER. I am sorry, I yield to Mr. St. Clair, if that is appropriate. Mr. ST. CLAIR. May I, sir? The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. Mr. ST. CLAIR. As I explained to Mr. Doar and I think to Mr. Jenner, the production of materials to Judge Gesell was essentially in two phases. The first phase was handled by Mr. Buzhardt. When he had his heart attack, which was very sudden, we were unable to ascertain precisely what he had furnished. For that reason, we asked the Special Prosecutor's office to give us copies of what they had so that we could furnish the complete set to this committee. Somehow or other, that |