Including the oyster industry and the restoration of the f 100 jet fighter. Laboratory of Thomas Edison in fort myers and hear the voices of the mormon tabernacle choir in salt lake city. 40 years ago this summer, events at the Supreme Court and at the white house quickly unfolded leading into 1974 into the only resignation into the american president. Coming up next, the House Judiciary Committee meeting members debate in impeaching president nixon. This was the second of three and impeachment articles the committee adopted. First, timothy naftali, former nixon president ial library director, explains why article ii was at the heart. Of the proceedings and how the vote continues to shape our understanding of president ial power. Joining us from new york is tim naftali who is the director of the library at New York University and former nixon president ial library director. Thank you for being with us. We want to go back 40 years ago as the house was beginning to debate article ii of impeachment, the abuse of power. I want to have you set up what was happening within this congressional meeting. This was a very important element of the drama of the constitutional crisis. The second article is all about president ial abuse of power. And that got at the heart of what the framers were actually thinking about when they chose to put the possibilities of impeachment into the constitution. Did they have a broad sense of what should be the reason . Or were they trying to seek a narrow reason . Could you remove a president just for being a bad president . Within the Republican Caucus and also within the Democratic Caucus, there were three southern democrats in the 21 member Democratic Caucus committee and there were some question as to what will be an abuse of power . And what kind of abuse of power would be impeachable . The debate is all about how first of all, could you prove the president did these things and are they impeachable . Something else one has to keep in mind. All 38 members of the committee were lawyers. A number of them felt, look, we need evidence that we could convict the president of if we were if he were indicted on a felony. Do we have the type of evidence that proves that Richard Nixon knew about these abuses . And that is a whole different standard. What you have are questions about what the framers had in mind and questions of whether the activities that had been found out by the committee and by the senate were indeed impeachable and thirdly, can we prove that Richard Nixon knew about them and even authorized them . You have three big issues that the committee has been thinking about for months. And a debate highlights them. It had been more than a century since congress had debated the issue of impeachment. What was the president of that house judiciary meaning to take up the articles . Youve touched on the debate. What was the case against and for impeaching Richard Nixon in 1974 . Well, there are three articles at issue. Previous to this was article i. That is about the coverup. Could you prove that nixon participated in an effort to prevent the investigation of the watergate breakin . That was article one. By the time they started debating article ii, article i had been passed by a vote of 2117. I am sorry. Article one had been passed by a vote of 2710 2711. You have six republicans who voted for article i. It is clear the committee already had a bipartisan majority for impeachment. It already happened. Article i has been passed by 2711 vote. This is the second article. This all about whether nixon had misused his authority and used executive power in a way that would conflict with the constitution and was in many ways criminal. The article itself highlights some of these activities. For example, the misuse of the fbi. Seeking files from the fbi to embarrass, humiliate, or hurt one of the president s political opponents. Daniels name was not mentioned. Many people were thinking of the case of dan shore of cbs, dan shore, was the object of a request of the fbi to humiliate him. There is the question of the misuse of the fbi. Theres a question of the use of a plumber to break into daniels psychiatrists office. Did the president know about it . Nobody on the committee doubted that the breakin of daniels psychiatrists office was a criminal act. The question there was, did the president know about it and authorize it . Then you have an issue of the irs. John dean testified about and in se list in these enemies list. A member of the Treasury Department was able to supply a list. The question was did what extent do Richard Nixon authorized the listing of the names, to what extent was it designed to go after political opponents . Then there was a question of the audit of larry obrien, the head of the Democratic National convention. What did the president know about that . The committee had some of the case. Some of the tapes had been given to the committee. The president had released a few tapes following a saturday night massacre of 1973. One of the tapes from september of 1972 did show the president participating in a conversation about misusing the irs. What some who wanted to protect the president were arguing was that was one instance. In the heat of politics, people make mistakes. Can you really say that one rant on one day constitutes a pattern of abuse of power . And were the framers wanted us wanting us to remove a president , which is a dramatic act in a democracy, on the basis of evidence of one thing of wrongdoing . We cannot even prove that anybody acted on what the president said. Maybe the next day, president nixon said, i had a headache, i did not feel well. I did not mean it. Ofre was a question president ial knowledge of some of the abuses. The question for those who wanted to protect the president was whether the evidence alone proved one, a pattern of misconduct and two, it had risen to the level you expect it to remove a democratically elected president. Let me conclude with this question. In a moment, a chance to see the debate from 1974. It is part of the day session. We will have the evening debate. To thetical was it argument that would have gone to the senate for a trial against the president . Well, part of this debate occurs three days after the Supreme Court ruled in a u. S. V. Nixon that the president would have to turn over some of the tapes. Within a few days, washington would be rocked by transcripts of the june 23, 1972 tape which would be called the smoking gun. It is that tape which proves the president participated in a cover up. A number of the republicans who were both with the president in articles one and two would later say they were going to switch their vote if it came up to the entire house and they will vote for article i. This particular debate is important for a different reason. It was not necessary to impeach nixon. He wouldve been impeached on andcle one in the house inevitable in the senate after the smoking gun conversation came out. This debate was about the shift in the United States in the 1970s over Public Opinion of the imperial presidency. A lot of what Richard Nixon thought part of the reason Richard Nixon thought he was right to do what he did, he assumed the president s before him had committed the same kinds of actions. And therefore, he was arguing others have done it. Why take me to task to doing what others have done . This debate which is part of a Larger National debate is about what we expect of our president. Even though article ii was not required to impeach Richard Nixon, the fact that article ii would be passed by a 2810 margin including seven republicans was a signal that we had reached the High Water Mark in the imperial presidency and it was about to go down. Congress realized that whether Richard Nixon wanted to are not, or not, he had acted on impulses that president s should not have in the constitution needed a little bit of help to ensure that in the executive branch did not overstep its bounds. After this, you would see a series of legislation including foreign Intelligence Surveillance act, other acts that indicated c
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