TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/70s/70resign

Text File | 1990-12-01 | 12KB | 229 lines

                _`^a                                                    b««Nixon Resigns

  [Resolved, that Richard M. Nixon has violated the duties and abused
the powers of the Office of President of the United States of America.
He has ignored his oath to execute the Office faithfully and to
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by
conducting the Office for her personal pecuniary benefit and political
advantage, misleading and deceiving the people of the United States
and their elected representatives in Congress, and by subverting the
principles of constitutional government. He has breached his duty to
take care that the laws be faithfully executed by willfully ignoring
the laws and by endeavoring to impede and obstruct their proper
execution. In all this, he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors
in the conduct of his Office, for which the House of Representatives
do impeach him.]

                                                      (July 29, 1974)

  So begins a proposed set of articles of impeachment presented to
the House Judiciary Committee last week by its special counsel, John
Doar, and minority counsel, Albert E. Jenner Jr. Indeed, there are so
many specific allegations against the President that five different
sets of impeachment articles were prepared by the staff and a few
Congressmen on the committee. The staff's aim was to give the members
most of the possible choices. The committee will apparently pick and
choose from all five sets as it makes its historic decisions.

  There are no fewer than 29 proposed articles of impeachment in the
five sets; many of them duplicate others but are put in a different
framework. Recurring as the predominant broad charges against the
President are these:

  1) He violated his constitutional duty to "take care that the laws
be faithfully executed."

  2) He obstructed the administration of justice.

  3) He abused the powers of his office by misusing agencies of
Government for his own political or pecuniary gain.

  4) He defied lawful subpoenas from both the Judiciary Committee and
the courts by making a claim of Executive privilege that was offered
"in bad faith" and was in reality intended to conceal evidence
damaging to him.


  [Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment
and trial, and removal from office.]

                                                     (August 5, 1974)

  After four garrulous days, the talking stopped. The room was
silent, and so, in a sense, was a watching nation. One by one, the
strained and solemn faces of the 38 members of the House Judiciary
Committee were focused on by the television cameras. One by one, their
names were called. One by one, they cast the most momentous vote of
their political lives, or of any representative of the American people
in a century.

  Mr. Railsback. Aye. Mr. Fish. Aye. Mr. Hogan. Aye. Mr. Cohen. Aye.
Mr. Froehlich. Aye.

  Thus six Republican Congressmen joined all 21 Democrats to
recommend that the House of Representatives impeach Richard M. Nixon
and seek his removal from the presidency through a Senate trial. And
thus the Judiciary Committee climaxed seven months of agonizing
inquiry into the conduct of Richard Nixon as President by approving an
article of impeachment that charges he violated both his oath to
protect the Constitution and his duty to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed. By that historic roll-call vote, Richard Nixon
became only the second President to stand so accused by a committee of
Congress.


                                                     (August 5, 1974)

  It was precisely 11:03 Wednesday morning when the marshal's cry of
"Oyez, oyez, oyez" rang out in the marble-pillared Supreme Court
Building. The eight Justices sitting in the case of United States v.
Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, et al. appeared from
their chambers and sat behind the massive mahogany bench. Definitely
and unanimously, the court ended President Nixon's effort to withhold
evidence from Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski in the Watergate case.
Nixon was ordered "forthwith" to turn over tapes and other records
relating to 64 White House conversations to Judge John Sirica's
district court for use by Jaworski in the upcoming trials of six of
the President's aides.

  In clear, nontechnical language, Burger elucidated the rulings of
the high court, giving first general principles, then showing how each
applied to the President's case:

>>The court firmly rejected Nixon's argument that as head of the
co-equal Executive Branch of the Government, he was entitled under the
Constitution to determine finally the scope of his own privilege. On
the contrary, the Judiciary's power to interpret the law, the decision
said, "can no more be shared with the Executive Branch than the Chief
Executive, for example, can share with the Judiciary the power to
override a presidential veto."

>>The President's claims of Executive privilege must give way to the
needs of the courts to settle a criminal case. Neither the separation
of the Executive and Judicial branches nor the need for
confidentiality "can sustain an absolute, unqualified presidential
privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances."


                                                    (August 19, 1974)

  It was over. At last, after so many months of poisonous suspicion,
a kind of undeclared civil war that finally engaged all three branches
of the American Government, the ordeal had ended. As the Spirit of '76
in one last errand arced across central Missouri carrying Richard
Nixon to his retirement, Gerald Rudolph Ford stood in the East Room of
the White House, placed his hand upon his eldest son's Bible, and
repeated the presidential oath "to preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States." By the time the 37th President of
the U.S. arrived at the Pacific, the 38th President had taken command
of a new Administration.

  It was the first time in American history that a President had
resigned his office. The precedent was melancholy, but it was hardly
traumatic. All of the damage had been done before in the seemingly
interminable spectacle of high officials marched through courtrooms,
in the recitation of burglaries, crooked campaign contributions and
bribes, enemies lists, powers abused, subpoenas ignored-above all, in
the ugly but mesmerizing suspense as the investigations drew closer
and closer to the Oval Office. now the dominant emotion was one of
sheer relief.

  The denouement was jarring in its swift resolution and therefore a
bit surreal. Nearly 800 days after the Watergate break-in, 289 days
after the White House transcripts were released, twelve days after the
Supreme Court voted, 8 to 0, that the President must surrender 64 more
tapes, five days after the House Judiciary Committee voted out
articles of impeachment, Nixon's defenses finally vanished. On Monday
he issued the June 23, 1972 transcript that amounted to a confession
to obstruction of justice and to lying to the American people and his
own defense counsel. With that his clock had run out.

  Nixon is gone-not a martyred figure as he may believe, but tragic
at least in his fall from a great height. He is gone because, with all
its luck in this case, the American system, the Congress and the
Judiciary, with the eventual overwhelming support of public opinion,
slowly and carefully excised him from the body politic. If there is a
certain "the-king-is-dead-long-live-the-king" spirit in the American
mood, the nation feels also that it deserves something better in its
leadership and is going to get it.

  For the President's lawyer, the awful moment of truth came on
Wednesday, July 31. On that day, he received and read the transcripts
of three conversations held on June 23, 1972, between Nixon and his top
aide, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. Instantly, the stunned St. Clair
knew that the contents were devastating to Nixon's defense. The
transcripts showed that just six days after the Watergate wiretap-
burglary, Nixon was fully aware that Re-Election Campaign Director John
Mitchell and two former White House consultants, E. Howard Hunt and
G. Gordon Liddy, had been involved-even though Hunt and Liddy had not
then been arrested. He was told by Haldeman that "the FBI is not under
control," and that agents were tracing money found on the burglars to
Nixon's re-election committee.

  Nixon immediately proposed cover-up actions. Haldeman relayed a
suggestion from Mitchell and Dean that the CIA should be asked to tell
the FBI to "stay to hell out of this" because the FBI probe would
expose unnamed-and actually nonexistent-secret CIA operations. Asked
Haldeman about the FBI, "You seem to think the thing to do is get them
to stop?" Replied Nixon: "Right, fine." Added Nixon later: "All right,
fine. I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the
rest."

  With those words, Nixon authorized the cover-up, a criminal
obstruction of justice that was eventually to destroy his presidency.


  ["Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States,
pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section
2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a
full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses
against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or
may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20,
1969, through August 9, 1974."]

                                                   (September 16, 1974)

  With these words, spoken in a slightly nervous voice to a small
group of reporters who had been hastily summoned to the White House on
Sunday morning, President Ford pardoned the anguished man whom he had
succeeded only 30 days before. As a result, Richard Nixon no longer
faces the threat of indictment, prosecution and even prison on federal
charges arising from the still-festering Watergate scandal.

  From his estate in San Clemente, Nixon issued a statement over "my
mistakes over Watergate." And, he said, "One thing I can see clearly
now is that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more
forthrightly in dealing with Watergate."


                                                 (September 23, 1974)

  Throughout the most painful week of Gerald Ford's fledgling
presidency, public protest continued to batter the White House. Far
from easing after the first shock of Ford's precipitate pardon of
Richard Nixon for any and all federal crimes committed during his
presidency, the controversy grew. It was fed partly by Ford's refusal
to explain further his mysterious reversal on his Executive
intervention, partly by White House fumbling on whether all the other
Watergate offenders might also be pardoned.

  There was as yet no evidence that Ford's motives were other than
high-minded and merciful. Indeed, some of the criticisms of his action
were overwrought and hysterical. Nevertheless, Ford's first major
decision raised disturbing questions about his judgment and his
leadership capabilities, and called into question his competence. He
had apparently needlessly, even recklessly, squandered some of that
precious public trust that is so vital to every President. By
associating himself so personally with the welfare of his discredited
predecessor, he had allowed himself to be tainted by Watergate.


  [In all, 26 former Nixon aides and agents pleaded guilty or were
convicted in the collective Watergate scandals, including the break-in
and bugging of the Democratic headquarters, the subsequent cover-up,
acts of sabotage against Democratic candidates in the 1972 elections,
payment of hush money to the Watergate burglars, the burglary of
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, Nixon's tax return
irregularities and the ITT potential bribery case. Ford's pardon of
Nixon, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate
cover-up, absolved him of culpability.]