| Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for
giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity
of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong
man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to
give you as much assistance as possible.
Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution
of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent
beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth
of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people."
I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander
Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment,
interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in
"We, the people."
Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and
would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith
in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am
not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution,
the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the
representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects
of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct
of public men."1 And that's what we're talking about. In other
words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some
public trust.
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for
any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article
of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President
should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn't say that.
The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands
of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments
of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature,
the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse
and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution
were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers --
and the judges the same person.
We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile
now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers
to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle"
the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a
method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."2
The framers confined in the Congress the power if need be, to remove
the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President
swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence
of the executive.
The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the
separation-of-powers maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787 said that.
It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted
and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to
be used only for great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North
Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification
convention: "We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch.
We need one branch to check the other."
"No one need be afraid" -- the North Carolina ratification
convention -- "No one need be afraid that officers who commit
oppression will pass with immunity." "Prosecutions of impeachments
will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,"
said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. "We divide
into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused."3
I do not mean political parties in that sense.
The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment;
but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional
term "high crime[s] and misdemeanors." Of the impeachment
process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that "Nothing short of
the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice
to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow
party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can."
Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for
petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform,
Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental
Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot
be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So
today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the
task we have before us is a big one.
This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that
the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of
the CIA by the President is thin. We're told that that evidence is
insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not
include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.
The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was
money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which
was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June
the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the
prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation
in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included
Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included
Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy
Administration.
We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought
to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming
from the President of the United States. There has not even been an
obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional
materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding,
and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee
sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited
with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President
would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.
At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment
criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged in. Impeachment
criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention.
"If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with
any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him,
he may be impeached."
We have heard time and time again that the evidence reflects the
payment to defendants money. The President had knowledge that these
funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972
presidential campaign. We know that the President met with Mr. Henry
Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately
thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information
Mr. Petersen was receiving. The words are: "If the President
is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be
grounds to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached."
Justice Story: "Impeachment" is attended -- "is intended
for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting
for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights
and rescue their liberties from violations." We know about the
Huston plan. We know about the break-in of the psychiatrist's office.
We know that there was absolute complete direction on September 3rd
when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had been made
in Dr. Fielding's office, after having met with Mr. Ehrlichman and
Mr. Young. "Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties
from violation."
The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those
are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their public trust."4
Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the
present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements
and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government
prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements
and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will
show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable,
those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the public
trust."
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President
is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The
Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that
the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled
his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand
jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise
a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the
processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if
he attempts to subvert the Constitution."
If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States
will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century
Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder.
Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed,
and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will
not tolerate? That's the question. We know that. We know the question.
We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason,
and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate,
and guide our decision.
*I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.*
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Federalist, No. 65
2 Federalist, No. 65
3 Federalist, No. 65
4 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States
* = text within asterisks absent from this audio
原文录音Audio/MP3
|
公告消息
网站首页 --> 经典英文演讲原稿和录音