Mr. SEIBERLING. Well, I think it's a very unfortunate decision. Mr. DENNIS. Mr. Chairman, may I be recognized for an inquiry? The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dennis.

Mr. DENNIS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no desire to interrupt Mr. Doar. However, I don't understand that that matter has been decided. I think at the appropriate time, and not now, but after Mr. Doar has concluded, that the committee should consider that matter. and I would hope that that would be done. That was my theory. I haven't waived anything, and I think it takes a committee action to release that type of material. I think it's a very serious question. I think we ought to hear Mr. Doar, but I agree with the gentleman from Ohio, that we haven't decided that matter, and it's got to be decided, but not by you in this case but by vote, I would respectfully suggest. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Doar.

Mr. DOAR. Mr. Chairman, before I begin I would like to say to you that what you have before you and what you have had before you for the last 6 months is the product of the work of 100 people. I think it's been a cooperative, unified group of 100 people, not all of us bringing to this task the same views, the same backgrounds, the same biases, conscious or unconscious. But, your staff, as I say, has worked together long and hard on what you are going to have now and what you have had. It is not my product. It is not Mr. Jenner's product. It is not the product of any one individual, but it is the best that all of us, all of us on your inquiry staff can give to you. And that includes Mr. Garrison, and the other members of the minority staff who have undertaken this special project, with which I fully agree. But, I wouldn't want it to be said that the work product, that the hard work of digging out the facts and testing the facts and measuring the facts, the logic, the common sense of the facts, whether they were consistent, whether they made sense, that what is in this product has not been the work of every single member of your inquiry staff.

Now, what we are trying to do for you, as we understand our direction, is to assist you in finding out what has happened with President Nixon's administration as President, and why it happened so the committee can perform its inescapable constitutional responsibility in a way that is explicable now and explicable in the future to the American people.

As an individual, I have not the slightest bias against President Nixon. I would hope that I would not do him the smallest, slightest injury.

But, I am not indifferent, not indifferent to the matter of Presidential abuse of power, by whatever President, nor the identification and proof of that abuse of power, if I believe that it has existed.

And if, in fact, President Nixon or any President has had a central part in the planning and executing of this terrible deed of subverting the Constitution, then I shall do my part as best I can to bring him to answer before the Congress of the United States for this enormous crime in the conduct of his office.

If any President, if President Nixon or any President has committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution, then there has been manifest injury to the confidence of the nation, great prejudice to the cause of law and justice, and subversion of constitutional government.

Members of the committee, for me to speak like this, I can hardly believe that I am speaking as I do or thinking like I do, the awesomeness of this is so, is so tremendous. But, with the awesomeness of the task it seems to me that the careful inquiry that you have made, lasting the last 612 months, has been no disservice, but rather great service to the American people.

Let me speak for a minute about Mr. St. Clair's response. Mr. St. Clair said to you you must have clear and convincing proof. Of course there must be clear and convincing proof to take the step that I would recommend this committee to take, not as a standard for this committee, and again I think I can talk in shorthand, as Mr. St. Clair said, because we are all lawyers, not as a standard. And I must be also careful here because there is a political factor in your decision that there is not nor could there be in mine.

But, the concept is clear, as I understand it, to all of us as lawyers. That is, that you don't go forward in serious matters unless you are satisfied in your mind, and heart, and judgment that legally and factually, reasonable men acting reasonably would find the accused guilty of the crime as charged.

Now, that's different than the standard, but so far as a practical matter I am saying, of course the proof must be clear and convincing. It is just a matter of prosecutorial judgment or legal judgment, or congressional judgment. Of that I have no doubt.

Now, as I listened to Mr. St. Clair yesterday, and I have listened to him before, I must be candid with you that I have had this one observation. It has occurred to me time and time again that Mr. St. Clair has things upside down. He's had things upside down throughout these entire proceedings.

Mr. LATTA. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, I don't like to object, but it seems to me that these statements outside Mr. St. Clair's presence are uncalled for, and I think Mr. Doar can make his presentation without attacking Mr. St. Clair.

Mr. BROOKS. Regular order, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LATTA. That is regular order.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Doar.

Mr. DOAR. I apologize. I apologize, Mr. Latta. I don't mean to attack Mr. St. Clair. Personally, I have nothing but the highest respect for him. But, I am talking about his concepts, his theories of the case, and I just want to say that, and it seems to me that his concept has been that the enormous power and authority of the Presidency, it was permissible to use that on behalf of an individual who might be the subject of criminal charges. But, that is my opinion and only my opinion, really; it is the facts, direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, time tested inferences, and, of course, judgment and common sense in the analysis of the factual information that we are trying to present to

you.

Well, yesterday when I listened to Mr. St. Clair's argument and followed its symmetry and logic, I found myself writing in the margin of my notes, as incident after incident flashed back through my mind as to some of the things that Mr. St. Clair dealt with and didn't deal with, I thought to myself, if what Mr. St. Clair says is true, then why, why did that happen. Why did this other incident happen. Some of the instances, and I am just going to touch on a few, seem to me inexpli

cable in terms of the picture or the portrait of Mr. St. Clair sketched for you.

I think everyone wants to believe our President. I wanted to believe that he had nothing to do with Watergate. But, event after event clicked through my mind, events that seemed, as I say, totally inexplicable within the logic of the case in the response of the President's lawyer.

What was his logic? As I see it, Mr. St. Clair argued that the proof showed that President Nixon believed his policy as President was to be carried out, right or wrong. In the ITT matter, you remember he said he was the elected official. It was his right and responsibility to make the judgment; that the country expected the President to take action which in his judgment he felt sound to protect the country; that he was a President concerned with national security; a President victimized by the stupidity of faithful but less-than-average subordinates, fooled by men into believing that they were innocent of an involvement, and mistaken in his judgment perhaps as to how to act, but acting humanly. too slow perhaps, but doing the right thing eventually in upholding the Presidency, the Constitution, and there having been no real harm done to our country.

Now, when I say the why, I thought back, I thought back to a number of things. The first thing that occurred to me was the President's dictation on the evening of March 21. During the evening of March 21 the President dictated his recollection of that day. You remember that memorandum. He dictated, he discussed the information that he had received from John Dean that Jeb Magruder was likely to acknowledge to the Watergate prosecutor that he had committed perjury, and that that would implicate his associates, John Mitchell, Mr. Strachan and also possibly Mr. Haldeman.

He said that John Dean felt he was guilty of some criminal liability due to the fact that he had participated in actions which resulted in taking care of the defendants under trial. Dean was concerned, the President said, because everybody was getting their own counsel, looking out for themselves, and as the President said, one would not be afraid to rat on the other.

The President said that Mr. Haldeman backed Dean up on this and advised the President that even Magruder would bring Haldeman down.

And then the President said, you know, to himself, Mr. Haldeman's selection of Jeb Magruder is a hard one to figure out. He said Bob made few mistakes, but in this case, Rose was right. He picked a rather weak man, regardless of his appearance, who really lacked it when the chips were down.

He said to himself, the one option is perhaps, taking it to a grand jury, but not for his key aides to appear, but he said that if they don't do that that puts the buck back on the President. And he also saw very grave danger that somebody like Hunt was going to blow.

He recognized Hunt's problems. He needed $100,000 to pay attor neys and handle other things, or else he was going to do and say things that would be very detrimental to Colson and Ehrlichman. The President labelled these in Dean's words as blackmail. He recognized that Hunt was in a bad position, he might be figuring on the benefit to himself by turning state's evidence.

The President said he felt bad because all of these people had done what they had done with the best of motives. He said he didn't think that Haldeman and Ehrlichman actually knew about the actual bugging of the Watergate. He knew that Dean didn't know. But, what he figured happened was it was Colson who was the pusher, and the driver, had pushed Magruder on behalf of Hunt and Liddy, and had followed what the President termed their natural proclivities, and taken that extra step and gotten everybody in trouble.

He said, he told himself how he learned about the Ellsberg break-in, and he said that Ehrlichman said he was about three or four steps away, but that Krogh had a problem that put him in a straight position of perjury. The President remarked that it would be a tragedy because Krogh was involved in national security work, nothing to do with Watergate.

He said finally that Strachan was really courageous. Strachan had knowledge of the matter, and according to Dean, he had transferred the $300,000 that Haldeman had, back to the committee. Then he said finally John Mitchell was coming down in the morning so that they could figure out what to do next.

Now, that was what he dictated to himself that night.

Presented, confronted with serious charges of obstruction of justice. by his key aides and associates, on the next morning, he called his Attorney General and he talked to him. What did he say to his Attorney General? He said to his Attorney General he would like him to give Senator Baker some guidance, he would like him to hold Baker's hand, to babysit him, starting like in the next 10 minutes.

The next day he called his Director of the FBI and he talked to him. That was after Mr. McCord had read his letter in open court, and he called his Director of the FBI and he gave him no information, he gave him no facts, no allegations, but he reminded him that he had told him in early July, Pat, I told you to conduct a thorough and aggressive investigation.

And then I thought of Henry Petersen, and that remarkable 10 days between the 15th and the 25th of April, and again I asked myself why. Here we had Henry Petersen dealing directly face to face and man to man with his President, the chief law enforcement officer of the country with respect to the Watergate affair. The present Attorney General had recused himself. Mr. Petersen himself was the President's Attorney General. They spent in those 10 days seven, eight, nine meetings, 20 phone calls. During that time Mr. Petersen was very forthcoming with his President, told him everything that was being developed, not the details of the grand jury information, but he sketched out sufficient so that the President had a clear idea of the nature of the charges that were being brought against the President's men, and an outline of the facts that would support those charges.

On the 10th day the President met with John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman at noon for 2 hours. Following that meeting the President directed H. R. Haldeman, one of the two men that Mr. Petersen had been telling him for the last 10 days was a subject of this criminal investigation, and very likely, very likely to have criminal charges brought against him, and what does the President do? The President directs Mr. Haldeman to ask for some 20 of the tape recordings and to go and listen to the tape recordings all afternoon that day.

And the President-it is explicable perhaps of the President to call in some independent person to listen to the tapes and to test and see what exactly was said on those tapes so the President could review his recollection. This is the 25th of April. This is the 25th of April, and on that day Mr. Haldeman listened to the tapes and made detailed notes for 3 hours that afternoon, and then he reported back to the President and talked to him for another hour after that.

And then the President's chief law enforcement officer, the man charged with investigating this matter, comes in and sees the President for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Does the President tell Mr. Petersen that I have a tape recording system that will assist you and assist you in getting to the bottom of this? Does the President tell his Attorney General, his chief law enforcement officer that Mr. Haldeman has been listening to the tapes, the man Mr. Petersen says is a suspect, the subject of this investigation? He does not.

Mr. Petersen and he discuss generally, and maybe on that occasion, certainly on an occasion the day before or the day after, the President gives Mr. Petersen his view of what he and John Dean talked about on the 21st about the payment of the money and how he had told John Dean after drawing him out, in a series of questions, as was his custom, that that was wrong.

I find that also inexplicable within the logic of Mr. St. Clair's argument.

A third example, and as I say, these are just examples that I just touch on briefly, a third example is the events of the 20th of June 1972. On the 20th of June 1972, it was 3 days after the Watergate break-in. You remember when the Watergate break-in occurred there were three centers of government at that time or political activity at the direction of the President.

The President and his party, that is, Haldeman and Ziegler, were at Key Biscayne. John Ehrlichman and Gordon Strachan and Higby were in Washington. John Mitchell, Mardian, LaRue, Magruder were in Los Angeles. We will develop for you the events and the activities of each of these groups between the 17th and the 20th of June. For now I want to only mention just briefly the 20th.

On the morning of the 20th, Mr. Haldeman, and you have got this all in the books, the logs and everywhere. Mr. Haldeman meets with Ehrlichman and Mitchell at 9 o'clock in the morning. Dean and Kleindienst join that meeting, and they meet from 9 to 10 o'clock. This is the first day that the President has come back faced with a possibility of certainly a very serious scandal within his administration.

What does the President do while his people, his key advisers are discussing this matter? The President is alone in his office, except for a 3-minute talk with Mr. Butterfield during that morning until John Ehrlichman comes in and talks to him about 10:30. He does not participate, does not inquire, does not question, does not search out for facts from John Mitchell, or Richard Kleindienst, his Attorney General, or Mr. Ehrlichman who had been assigned to the case the day before to make an investigation, or 2 days before, or from John Dean who had been called back to get into it.