Collection, and was conducted by a former libraryngtb director, timothy nephtally on july 9th, 2018. When you graduate in 1973, what do you expect to be doing in 1974 . Well, i expected to be doing what i started out doing when i graduated, which was to go to work for the Childrens Defense Fund for marion aidalman. B6 and again, i think thats right. I wanted to go to work with her so i moved to cambridge, and began working doing investigations and litigation around issues like the incarceration of juveniles with adults in adult prisons or the efforts to give tax exempt status to private segregated academies so they didnt have to pay taxes. Issues like that. T5, j expanding child care, 2 Getting Better conditions for migrant workers. I mean, thats the kind of work we were doing. And thats what i started doing when i graduated and went right to cambridge to workynjz for he. Please tell us about the call from john dole. This is a very funny series of actions. I was down visiting bill in arkansas around, i think it was right after christmas, if i remember. Either right before or after. And bills phone rang and he got a call from john, and he said i have been asked to put together a team of lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether there are grounds for impeachment of president nixon. And i have a list of people that i have gone over with burke marshall, and youre at the top of the list. If you would like to come to work. And bill said, well, actually, im going to run for congress, so i cant. And bill said, who else is on your list . And john said, well, mike conway, rufus cormier, and Hillary Rodham. He said, well, Hillary Rodham is standing right here. He passed me the phone, and john asked me if i wanted to go to work in washington for the impeachment inquiry staff. I said yes. Im very honored to be asked. And so shortly some time after the first of the year, i left my job at the Childrens Defense Fund and moved to washington and went to work for john dorr. How long did you think it was going to last when you said yes . Right. I dont know that i thought like i think, you know, when youre really young and just starting out, how long does a job take . I didnt even know what the job was at thatepoint. I had no timetable at all. Was there any concern on the future president s part that youre doing this might somehow affect his ability to run . No, no. I mean, first of all, he was running for congress, a race which he lost, by the way. So if he had not been running for congress, i believe its very likely he would have said yes. Because, you know, a chance to work with john on such a historic assignment like this and youre a really young out of law school lawyer, hard to say it a Second Thought about my doing it. Did he talk to ray thornton about this . I have no idea. I dont know. Okay. So in january, you arrive. Joe says january 19th. Doesnt matter. When you arrive, youre among the first. I think thats right, yes. I think those of us from yale who were going to be the youngest lawyers on the team, my memory is we all got there about the same time. But thats just what iu3 rememb. And it was, you know, a startup law firm. It had to be put together. There were a groupxfhjt senior lawyers that john either knew or knew of that he had recruited. And then there were us. There werent very many, you know, lawyers in the middle between people like, you know, john and joe woods and bernie up nesbaum and richard gill who had a lot of experience already thib law, some of them in government. And then us, you know, newly minted lawyers. This may surprise people who watch this. There was an effort to make this a single committee. Mmhmm. Though there were people chosen by the minority staff. And one of those that met you right off the bat was bill weld. Yes, thats right. Can you tell us what you remember . I think there was a very serious effort, which i think in the majority hired john doerr, and the minority hired burt jenner, who had started jenner block, and both jenner and doerr were experienced lawyers. Had really done complicated cases, either civil rights or business or any other of the challenges lawyers face. So bill weld was there very early. He was one of the first people that i met. And i got to know, and i worked with. And it was a great team. And i think we all felt like we were on the same team. There was the majority and the minority staff. Obviously, they were hired by different members, but we worked very hard to overcome any sense of separation. People looking back on that era will think there was a n what happened. n what historians think that way, but when you started out, you were supposed to look for grounds for impeachment. But john 1 , doerr wasnt askinu for prosecutorial things. Thats right. There are several aspects that i hope historians and citizens, particularly young people, understand. There were three big challenges that doerr wanted us to meet. One was, what are the grounds for impeachment . There had been andrew johnson. There had been a number of judges who had been impeached. But the team looking at that, and i was a very small part of that, doing the research, that team was looking all the way back to Early English precedent since the founders took the idea obviously from the commonwealth. There was the issue of how do you proceed . How do you actually set up an appropriate process to consider all of these issues . And then the third was what are the facts. And how do we understand the facts. Facts. So there wasf9i grounds for impeachment, how you described what high crimes and misdemeanors were. How it needed to relate to abuse of office and powerimmry if it in keeping with the precedents such as they were. And then there was the process standards that i worked on a lot about, okay, what do we do and how do we do it, and what is our role compared to the role of the committee . . T0jt that doerr had used in the Justice Department and probably in his law practicepfl z wisconsin. And they were statements of they were not characterized as evidence because we concluded that it wasnt our job to make a prosecutorial case and present the evidence that supported that case. But rather to prevesent the fac to the committee and the committee would form their own conclusions. I often laugh thinking about it, but we had these little note cards and we were supposed to put one fact on a note card. So, for example, i remember we were working on this. And doerr said go right back to the beginning. Who is Richard Nixon . How did he get where he is . So a fact would be richard mill house nixon was born on date of birth in wittier, california. And he would say, no, those are two pieces of information. You have one card for the year he was born and one card for where he was born. Because apparently, in johns practice, he would use these cards to find patterns. And if he didnt have enough of the cdofacts, he couldnt dedu the patterns. So we learned, i mean, thats why we had these little cards. And they attempted, as i recall, some method in the library n organize and sort them, but, you know, really, computers were not in common use. And i think john preferred his system anyway. So we spent a lot of time doing these cards. And looking for anything that could be a piece of information that might go into the presentation we would make to the committee. Is it true they used knitting needles as a way of sorting the cards . Ixt u think that was a shortlived experiment. I dont remember because i wasnt really doing it, but yeah, they were you took the fact which was predominantly hand written, at least the ones i did were hand written. Punch card. Then the punch cards had certain holes in them, and the idea was it was so primitive that if you took a knitting needle and had a stack of these cards, and you were looking for, you know, his childhood experiences or the committee to reelect the president , whatever it might be, you take a knitting needle and go through and pick up the cards that would have the hole in a certain place. I think itcfw÷ was a lot easier you just kept the cards in front of you and shuffled them around. I would see john and some of the senior lawyers talking about that. And whats the significance of this piece of information, and how does it fit and what does it tell us. Governor weld told a story about when you arrived, when both of you arrived, john doerr said to you on a friday, would grounds for impeachment on tuesday. I wont ask for monday. It would actually take the lawyers a long time. Thats right. But how did you approach this problem . Im sure you didnt study this in law school. No, but bill weld is absolutely right. We never had a weekend. We worked, you know, 16, 18hour days. We sometimes would leave the building to go to dinner. But then go right back. So this first assignment was just the beginning of what would be the most intense effort that one could imagine. And the grounds for impeachment was part of the research that i contributed to the procedures, okay, what does this mean . How are we going to do this . Is this a trial . The trial is really in the senate, so what is it that the house does, and how do we set ourselves up to serve the house . And so i worked closely with joe woods on what the procedures are. In fact, there is a picture of jktjkt and woods appearing before, if i remember right, one of the subcommittees of the Judiciary Committee to present ideas about ngvprocess. Maybe congressman ca castenmeyer . It sounds right. Help people understand what the difference between the committee and a grand jury. Oh, yeah. Well, a grand jury is first and foremost part of the executive branch of our government. A grand jury in a federal matter is convened by a u. S. Attorney or by the Justice Department for the purpose of presenting evidence to determine whether the grand jury will bring in information or an indictment against whoever the target of the potential prosecution might be. Its proceedings are supposed to be absolutely secret. The person being questioned does not go in with a lawyer. You go in all by yourself, and youre there with whoever the prosecutor has investigators, fbi. Whoever it might be, and then theres a grand jury made up of citizens from the area. The Judiciary Committee is part of the congress. And the congress has the Sole Authority for determining impeachment. The house brings the articles of impeachment, if they so decide, the senate conducts the trial. And for us, we were asked by doerr, and i think this probably came from others on the committee, to recognize that they were the authority. It was it wasnt our job to present an article of impeachment. It was our job to present information, to present the legal standards in whatever process we agreed upon, and then it was up to the committee to determine whether it would move forward. To what extent were you involved in the debate over whether james st. Clair, the president s lawyer, should be in the proceeding . I was not involved in that. I knew about it. That was really among the senior lawyers led by doerr and the house members. And my memory is that they were very expansive in permitting sinclair to be privy to information, to be part of the qj dont ÷mv know any more details. Did you have to do any research on subpoena . I dont recall doing that because we were in a position to negotiate. Watergate Committee had already subpoenaed and obtained a wealth of information. And part of the process that doerr had to go through is to irvin, to share what they had already gotten, either voluntarily or through subpoena. That included the tapes. To a great extent. So, i dont recall us but i dont have perfect knowledge of this either. I dont recall having to subpoena. We had to work out agreements and maybe as part of that, there was a subpoena that had to be eithered or quashed. Youre part of a group thats trying to figure out an issue that this country hadnt looked at for centuries. Right. Some people, bill weld, for example, starting out thinking an Impeachable Offense is a crime, and then he changed his mind. I know its a long time ago, but can you remember how the research affected how you think about this . Similar to bill weld, once i done the research, it seemed that the president was not above the law, he did have certain authorities, certain standing. So it didnt require that there be a crime charged in order for there to be an Impeachable Offense. gc obstruction of justice is a crime. And whether a president is ever charged with obstruction of justice or not, the obstruction of an investigation can represent abuse of power that rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors and therefore be the basis of an article of impeachment. Do you remember thinking about the difference thinking about standards of evidence, probable cause or clear and convincing or beyond a reasonable doubt . The constitution didnt say anything about that. Right, right. Right, but thats why i think doar was very careful in what he eventually presented to the committee. I think he believed that the whole enterprise really turned on there being sufficient evidence, not necessarily to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt for a criminal matter, but certainly enough to be persuasive. Clear and convincing. Because this was, in effect, the charging mechanism. If there had been a trial, then i think doar would have had to pivot toward a more explicit reliance on beyond a reasonable doubt because that would be how the public would perceive it. But there was no real guidelines for that because what did it mean and who got to determine it . Well, at the end of the day, the articles were passed. If some came out by the house, the trial was held by the senate. And they had the right under the constitution to impose their own understanding of what an Impeachable Offense was. One of the debates that some of the fence sitters had was, should you vote for an article of impeachment if you dont think that the senate will vote to remove. So they were actually already thinking about the trial. Right. Well, i think that thats one way of looking at it. And it certainly is defensible. But i think another way of looking at it is that if you are persuaded that the president has abused power, committed a high crime or misdemeanor, then its up to the proof that has to be presented in a trial to determine whether two thirds of the senate agrees with that. And remember, the senators could bring whatever assessment they wanted to this determination. And you couldnt second guess that. You couldnt preempt that. It had to be left to them. As you were doing this research, what were the surprises for you . Well, i mean, it hadntzl happened in a president ial setting for over 100 years. And there was a lot wrong with what was done to andrew johnson. He was hardly a paragon of political rectitude, but it was more than it should have been in our assessment, a proceeding based on politics, not on evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors. However one defined that. So 100 years later, you have a crime, the breakin of watergate. You have a very vigorous investigation going on through the congress already, through the Watergate Committee. And so we were trying to impose an understanding of the law and the history combined with a process that would be viewed as fair, providing due process to the president , if articles of impeachment were decided. So we were trying to rely on precedent as much as we could, but we were kind of making it up based on our best understanding of the law as we researched it. Secrecy is important. Totally. How did mr. Doar enforce secrecy . I think that, first of all, there were no cell phones. That makes a big difference. But i think he, by just force of character, made it clear to all of us, we did not know where this was going to end up. I certainly didnt. I didnt come into it with any preconceived ykqnotion, okay, t is going to be easy. Were going to lay out all this stuff and the house will impeach and hell be convicted in the senate. I didnt do that. I dont know anybody who did. Because it was such a historic experience, we all felt the and john made very clear that we would be betraying our duty as lawyers and our historic obligation if we talked. And when we would occasionally go out for lunch, you know, the building where we were working would be staked out by reporters who would be yelling at us. I particularly remember sam donaldson, who had a really loud yell. You got to know the names of the lawyers. Hillary, hillary, come here and talk to me. We would just walk by. I remember when i appeared at the hearing, at one of the hearings with doar and joe woods. You know, before i went over there, because doar wanted to take me because i had done so much of the work, and i appreciated it, but he said dont talk to anyone. Dont make facial expressions. Dont betray any opinion. Were there just to make a presentation to the members of the committee. We would maintain the secrecy that was so critical for this whole investigation. There were a lot of leaks, but they werent from the staff. No, they werent. They werent. Not from the staff. How many women were with you on the committee . I dont know. I want to say maybe i mean, i can call the names, see the faces of five. There might have been more, but those are the ones that i interacted with the most. I think on joe woods team, on his task force, you had john lev awits, david haynes, as well as bill weld and yourself. After mr. Woods leaves in may, is that when you move to bernies team or does bernie take over . Can you remember what happened when mr. Woods left . No, inkogn really cant reme. I remember working closely with joe, particularly on the standards to be applied, working with john on the grounds for impeachment, along with bill weld. I shared an office with a young lawyer who was in john doars law firm in wisconsin by the name of tom bell. He was very focused on, you know, aggregating and recording the facts, the statements of information. So i dont remember. I do remember that starting in early summer, maybe this was through bernie, i began listening to tapes. And i began to listen to the tapes of president nixon talking to his staff members, talking to henry kissinger, talking to his filipino valet. And i particularly remember what we called the tape of tapes, which was richardxdy0ujz i tap himself listening to tapes. And i was one of several people whose job it was to try to in so far as possible, perfect the transcription. So we would sit there, you know, with the headphones on, just exhaustingly listening, trying to make out words. Some of the transcription had already occurred, but some of it was garbled. It was not at all clear. But the tape of tapes was a big revelation to me. I had no idea that he would beo taping himself alistening to tapes and then coming up with rationalizations, so he would call somebody into the room, and he would say, i want to play this for you. Now, when i said this, heres what i meant. So it was quite it was really a shocking experience. What do you think you concluded that the president , then president , was involved in a coverup . I think for me, it was listening to the tapes. And particularly the socalled tape of tapes. Because it was almost a textbook example of someone trying to get stories straight and getting other people to get their stories straight. I tried really hard not to have an opinion during the winter and spring. But then, we would hear from john and bernie and others how they were piecing together the facts that accumulate. And there were a couple of facts that they found particularly written about numerous times, but when nixon threw the ashtray, and i think that fact had a big impact on some of the committee. Because when youreotja given information that you expect, but it doesnt come out the way you wanted it to, so you pick up an ashtray, and out of frustration, anger, disappointment, you throw it, i had the feeling that that was a turning point when that fact was placed in with Everything Else for a number of the lawyers. So you remember, you actually can remember that moment . Yeah, because that was just a turning point because either he didnt know and he had been manipulated by his staff, or he did know and he was trying to cover it up. And thats how it came across. I think that information came from colson. It could be. The day before article i was bipartisan majority, congressman sandman went on an attack against congressman sarbanes. Im sure youll remember this, but it had an affect on the staff because that night, the attack was you dont have enough specifics. We need specifics. And you cannot impeach a president without specifics. And that night, staff worked tirelessly to put together 7b cifics for every charge in article i. Did you participate in that . Mthat. Vmp see, that was the necessary transitioning away from just presenting the statements of information. I think doar and the other senior lawyers were very aware that they didnt want to get ahead of thecck. committee. Which i think was the right position for them to be in. But then when the committee was saying, wait a minute, you know, i cant wade through all of this. You have to tell me what it means. You have to construct an argument, and if youre looking at article i, you have me what are the pieces of information that either support it or disprove e 3it. And thats when we had to pivot into, you know, producing much more a much more detailed case, if you will. Do you remember the work done i do. I do, yes. You know, he i dont know whether john knew him or birk marshall knew him. I dont remember that. But he was brought onboard to provide some Historical Perspective and analysis. Were you a sort of liaison . I worked i cant say i worked with him. But i was available to him to do whatever he needed done. We dont have a lot of time. I just want to ask you a few more questions if i may. Do you remember very closely, yes. X [ well, fred is a meticulous lawyer. He hadmn a very clear view a how to gather facts, how to evaluate them, and how to present them. He worked incredibly hard. He was somebody that i admired and really valued as a colleague. Did you do any research on the abuse of powers . I dont remember. I dont know. I probably pitched in on everything, but i cant remember. Where were you when the articles were being passed . I think i was in the office. I think thats where i was. Was itwad] a surprise . Was it a surprise . By the time they actually were voted on, it wasnt a surprise because i think rodino and his Committee Staff had a pretty fair idea of who was going to vote for it by then. What was your reaction to the Supreme Court case, u. S. V nixon. About the tapes . Ananzyyes. I thought the outcome was really required because the tapes were done in the course of his official role as president. And so i think that having to turn them over and having to get them catalogued and be available for the public was the right decision. Okay. Just three more questions and then well be done. What do you remember of president nixons resignation . I was not at all happy or jubilant about him resigning. I thought it was8duvuj a very chapter in our history. I thought the actual departure wasca]ztloax really poignant, p moment for him and his family as well as for the country. So, i watched it on tv like i guess everybody else did. And it was a really very unfortunate, sad xyncoutcome. What was it like to meet president nixon later . I met him when billukidv was the white house. I dont recall ever meeting him before. But i vn thoughavent thought ht that. He had been to russia. He called the white house and asked if he could come by and brief bill about his trip to russia. Bill was fascinated by the idea because despitepio his resigna and his abuse of power, he was intelligent person who knewznin lot about the world. And so chelsea and i bill, he was brought into the white house and brought up the elevator to the second floor, because bill was going to meet him in his private study. He came at night, as i recall. But maybe just right after he got back from russia. So chelsea and i and bill greeted i8fhim, welcomed his ba to the white house. He had obviously thought about what he wanted to say, so he saw working hard on health care. Thats really a big task. And when he saw chelsea, he said, oh, my daughters went to sidwell like you are. So he had something that he prepared to say to us. And then he had a folder so i think he had written a memo. But then he and bill went off to talk about russia. And you went to his funeral . I did. I went to hisio and one of the really few regrets i have about our eight years in the white house is that i didnt go to pat nixons funeral. I think we were just noth. Hi wellinformed or understanding of the protocol. I dont we had other things and i think the schedulers or whoever was looking at this basically didnt appreciate the significance that it should have had. So i deeply regret not going to mrs. Nixons funeral but we did go to president nixons funeral. President clinton gives a eulogy. Did you were you involved in at all in how he described nixon . I dont recall. He probably talked to me about it. We kind of bounce ideas off of each other. I may have seen a draft. But i dont recall any specific advice that i gave him. What was it like to be in that youre among people that you had studied. Mmhmm. How did it make you feel . Well, by that time i was much more familiar with the role of being first lady. And it was the right and proper thing to be at his funeral, to represent the country as we were all doing. So i talked to a number of the former president s whom i knew, the former first ladies would i knew. It was a Beautiful Day in yorba linda, and it was a very touching, touching funeral, memorial service. What should the country have learned from the houses role in impeachment in 1974 . M. Nu i think that its such a serious undertaking. Do not pursue it for trivial partisan political purposes. If it does fall to you while your in the house, to examine abuses of power by the president. Be as circumspect and careful as john doar was. Restrain yourself from grandstanding and holding news conferences and playing to your base. This goes way beyond whose side your on or whose on your side. And try to be faithful purveyors of the history and the solemnity of the process. And i guess that lesson wasnt learned . That lesson was not learned. And that is why i think its important to keep talking about how serious this is. It should not be done for political partisan purposes. So those who did it in tccb last 90s, those who talk about it now, should go back andcxlz y the painstaking approach that the impeachment inquiry staff took and it was bipartisan. You had a bipartisan staff and you had both democratic and republican members of the committee reaching the same conclusions that there were grounds for impeachment. Secretary clinton, thank you for your time today. Thank you. Good to talk to;ukp you. Cspan has unfilter coverage the Supreme Court and Public Policy events. You could watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspan daily Washington Journal Program or through your social media feeds. Cspan, created as a Public Service and brought to you today by your televisionuzx provider. A copy of the book first lady influence and impath featuring the nations first ladies. Now available in paper back, hard cover or as an ebook. Hello, this is hillary clinton. I want to thank you for letting me speak with you about an issue that is