If we are to be faithful to our oath to support the constitution, we must find him faithless in his. Secretary william cohen, you were a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Opening Statements that concluded and now the debating is about to get underway. Explain what happened. The first thing that happened, republicans demanded of our chief counsel and minority counsel, and i believe it was congressman sandman took the case, along with congressman wiggins. They said where is the specificity . Youre alleging obstruction of justice. Where are the specifics . They had a point. And then made that pretty emphatically. I think it rocked the committee back a bit. It was a very broadgauged language and did not have a lot of specifics. The committee felt like it was on its heels. They had to reconnoiter is such, and we went back to our offices and i did receive a call, meeting with Tom Railsback and others and they said, you like to write, why dont you see if you can put these things, these facts together in a way that can be persuasive. So i was charged with organizing one of the arguments for the articles of impeachment, and then had to make that case the next day. And i would answer specifically, this is why this particular charge is included specifically. So that was a legitimate challenge on the part of those supporting the president. So we had to respond to that. We did. As you look back at that time, who were some of the key players in the committee that you work with . I did not work with anyone until that moment came when i met with Tom Railsback in his office, and i really didnt work with anyone other than that time when they came back and said ok, up to you now. You have to draft these issues and argue them. That was under an agreement with Tom Railsback, myself, and the group that met in his office. That was the only interaction i had with any of my colleagues at that time. At what point did you think president nixon was going to be impeached and forced out . I can pretty much tell by the Opening Statements where it was going to go. I was surprised by some. For example, harold freundlich decided to vote for impeachment. Who is he . He was a congressman from wisconsin. And then congressman hogan from maryland also voted for impeachment, and that was a surprise to me, because they were perhaps two of the more critical questioners behind closed doors of the committees presentation. So that became a surprise to me. I wasnt surprised by any of the other votes because i had been meeting had met with in henry smith, hamilton fish, Tom Railsback and congressman flowers. Did the system work . Did the constitution work . Did the checks and balances you have served in the legislative branch and in the secretary of defense in the Clinton Branch between executive and legislative, did all that work in the summer of 1974 . I think it did, and i think the country felt it did. You have to remember what the country was going through. In a decade, we had the assassination of president kennedy, the assassination of bobby kennedy, the assassination of dr. King, the war in vietnam. Trying to extract ourselves from vietnam. Then watergate . It was quite a heavy load the American People were being asked to bear at that time, and it showed in the voices and expressions of the members. Tom railsback was under enormous stress because he was a strong supporter of president nixon. He lost his voice during the course of those proceedings and never regained it. Congressman flowers was suffering from bleeding ulcers during the course of the hearings. Hamilton fish under tremendous pressure from his father, who had served previously, and a leader of the conservative movement and those who would come to closed sessions in public sessions, he would come with a rabbi from new york. They made it very clear that they were fundamentally opposed to what ham fish was saying and doing and where the committee was going. So there were a lot of personal things that were taking place in the lives of individuals that perhaps were never known to the public but for but were felt in the committee. Did you have a sense of how riveting these moments were and how Many Americans were washed into proceedings on television . Until we opened up to the public, the answer was no. We had a meeting day after day in private sessions and of course the press was always trying to get information about whats going on, what can you tell us. It was pretty close. I would brief of the press from time to time on context or were moving in the right direction in terms of getting evidence or something, but there was never any breaches of confidentiality in terms of what was going on. It was very closed session series of sessions. I dont think any of us had any notion of what the impact was going to be once it became public. I didnt, certainly. To put this into context, the hearings began in july 1974. A month later, Richard Nixon resigned. Did you have a sense that it was going to happen that quickly . No, i thought it would go to the house and i thought the house would recommend articles of impeachment to the senate and the senate would have a trial. That was my expectation. Looking at the clock, it looked like it was a way for the president to run out the clock because congress is out in the summertime. We come back in if it went over september. To the senate, the senate had rules in which it could delay it well beyond november. Then you would have a new congress elected and the question would become, can the new Congress Take up articles that were voted by the old congress . Looking at it from a gaming perspective, the president could very well have tried to run the clock out, so to speak, on the impeachment process. What happened a very key missing , tape was disclosed, and that shifted opinion on the part of the republicans, who were his staunchest defenders. Forget the book that Theodore White had written called breach of faith. It was that breach of faith that took president nixons ardent supporters to saying we can go any further on this. He had a beautiful way of describing how you could take a frenchman, take him out of the context, his dna is french. Or the chinese, their dna is chinese, but every country myth. It smith its the myth that binds america together is that we are all equal under the law. If you take that myth away, you basically unravel the knitting together of so many different ethnic and religious and secular groups in this country, that the myth as he described it was the rule of law that everybody is bound by. No one is above it. If you say the president is above it, then you start to unwind that. The way he wrote about that i think was what members felt, it was basically a breach of faith. People have faith in their president. They believe that he has an absolute duty and will carry out the law. He will not abuse it. He will not take his position to interfere with the flow of justice and use neutral instruments of government be it the irs of the justice department, to in any way interfere with that due process as such. So i think thats what the country came to see, what we were talking about, and being able to hear all the evidence and listen to all the evidence and then come to the conclusion saying we are persuaded that he has in fact either authorized the breakin, or certainly the coverup, and we were persuaded beyond certainly a condensing a convincing case had been made that he should at least stand trial in the political sense of having to have a trial in the senate. But nobody felt great about it. Most people felt burdened the decision, they didnt ask for it, didnt want to make it, but felt there was no alternative. We were the elected officials of the American People and we had a duty under the constitution to measure whether the highest officer in the country had breached his duty. William cowan, former senator, former defense secretary, and december 1974, republican member of the House Judiciary Committee. Thank you very much for being with us. A pleasure being with you. Week oninder, next sunday evening we will continue our look into the House Judiciary Committee as it debated articles of impeachment on the president s abuse of power in july of 1974. 40 years ago, the watergate scandal led to the only resident asian of an american president. American history tv revisits 1974 and the final weeks of the nixon administration. What you have here are questions about what the framers had in mind, questions about whether the activities that had been found out by the committee and by the Senate Watergate committee were indeed impeachable, and thirdly, can we prove that Richard Nixon knew about them and even authorize them . Watergate, 40 years later. Michelle is our guest on this weeks q and a. Uart focus on the crisis of the day. My responsibility as undersecretary of defense was representing the secretary on the deputies committee, which is the seniorlevel group that is working through the issues, developing options for the principles and the president. A lot of crisismanagement focus. When you are in a think tank, euro utility is not trying to secondguess the policymaker utility is not trying to secondguess the policymaker, but to help look over the horizon and see what are the issues i will confront five years from now, 10 years from now . How do i think more strategically about americas role in the world . Former underserved area of the fence undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy sunday night at 8 00 eastern and pacific on cspans q and a. Cabana discusses the history and future of nasa. A former Space Shuttle asked or larger focuses on nasas space extortion efforts, the effort to put a man on mars, and the future of space travel. [applause]
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