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RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1974 Through the Fire (Part 20) The House Impeachment Inquiry Begins
Manage episode 425700783 series 3445865
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The House Judiciary Committee is about to take center stage. In February 1974, the House votes to start the inquiry on Impeachment in ernest. They assign the task to the House Judiciary Committee under its new Chairman Peter Rodino, a little known New Jersey Democrat from Jersey City. He had assumed the position out of seniority after Elizabeth Holtzman's upset victory had unseated Chairman Emanuel Celler, who had served 50 years in the House and was a friend and supporter of President Nixon.
Most of the committee was made up of lesser known political figures, some at the very start of their political careers like Holtzman and Mississippi Republican Congressman Trent Lott. They would be assigned the enormous and volatile task of investigating the President of the United States for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The spotlight would fall to them. Would they be fair? Would they be bi-partisan? Could they meet the test?
Here we examine the committee and their efforts to staff up to look at the evidence. We will also look at a major decision made by the lead staff person they hired, John Doar. Mr. Doar was himself a former Justice Department lawyer who had been heavily involved in civil rights work. He had lived in New York City at an early point in his career and then worked in the South. At several points along the way he had become friends and maintained a friendship with Henry Ruth, now serving as the number 2 man in the Special Prosecutor's Office.
In this episode you will hear from Henry Ruth himself at just how close that relationship was and how it played to the advantage of his staff and their efforts to get all the evidence they had over to the House Committee, all while circumventing all the due process procedures that normally protect a defendant in any criminal proceeding. In this case, against a President of the United States of America, you will see every effort made that could be, to render the leader of the free world defenseless before an unsuspecting committee of lesser known political figures.
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