• U.S.

The Nation: The Charges: Articles of Impeachment

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TIME

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 his 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.

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.

The five approaches to drawing up the articles vary mainly in how specific such articles should be and which presidential acts should be considered evidence of a violation of a particular duty imposed on the President by the Constitution. All sets, however, avoid the issue of whether a President can be impeached only for an indictable criminal offense, as Nixon’s lawyers insist, or whether he can also be impeached on the broader ground of failure to carry out the duties of his office, as most constitutional scholars hold: each set of articles includes both kinds of impeachable acts.

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.

The committee’s impeachment debate probably will center on the more specific allegations of presidential misconduct. They arise from:

1) The cover-up of White House involvement in the Watergate wiretapping-burglary.

2) The attempt to “defame” Pentagon Papers Defendant Daniel Ellsberg with information obtained by a burglary of the office of his psychiatrist.

3) The firing of the first Watergate Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, for persisting in seeking evidence from the President.

4) Nixon’s “willful” evasion of income taxes.

5) His use of public funds to enhance the value of his personal property at Key Biscayne and San Clemente.

Also cited prominently in the proposed articles of impeachment are the President’s alleged attempts to use the Internal Revenue Service to harass political enemies, his willingness to install Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General even after Kleindienst testified falsely before a Senate committee in order to conceal a conversation with the President, and the wiretapping of a number of Government officials and newsmen for political purposes.

One set of proposed articles, prepared by Doar, presents the most concise case against the President in four charges. The language is direct and harsh. Excerpts:

ARTICLE 1. “Beginning almost immediately after the [Watergate] burglary, and continuing up to the present time, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, acting directly and personally and through his personal agents at the seat of Government and their immediate subordinates, has made it his policy to cover up and conceal responsibility for the burglary, the identity of other participants and the existence and scope of related unlawful covert activities.

“The means of implementing this policy have included the subornation of perjury, the purchase of silence of those directly participating in the burglary, the obstruction of justice, the destruction of evidence, improper and unlawful interference with the conduct of lawful investigation by the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Special Prosecutor, improper and unlawful misuse of other agencies of the Executive Branch, including the CIA, and the release of deliberately false and misleading statements from the White House and by the President. For all this Richard M. Nixon is personally and directly responsible. For his part in it he has been found by a duly constituted grand jury in the District of Columbia to have participated in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, but not indicted solely by reason of his office as President, leaving the pursuit of justice no recourse but through the constitutional powers of impeachment and removal from office granted to the Congress.”

ARTICLE 2. “On Sept. 3, 1971, agents of the White House, on behalf of Richard M. Nixon and solely in the interest of obtaining information to be used by him and his agents in public defamation of Daniel Ellsberg, unlawfully committed burglary at the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, in Los Angeles, Calif. The agents who committed this crime were part of a special unit established in the White House at the direction of Richard M. Nixon to engage in such unlawful covert activities, were supervised directly by John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President, and were financed in part by the unlawful conversion of funds raised for campaign purposes and controlled on behalf of the President by Special Counsel to the President Charles Colson. The burglary was part of a pattern of massive and persistent abuse of power for political purposes involving unlawful and unconstitutional invasion of the rights and privacy of individual citizens of the United States.”

ARTICLE 3. “Richard M. Nixon has refused without cause to comply with the subpoenas [from the Judiciary Committee], in contempt of the Congress and of the cause of constitutional government, leaving the process with no recourse but through the exercise of the constitutional powers of impeachment and removal from office that are granted to the Congress.”

ARTICLE 4. “In his tax returns for the taxable years 1969 through 1972, Richard M. Nixon claimed deductions of approximately $500,000 based on the claimed deed of his vice-presidential papers to the United States. These claims constituted a fraud upon the United States because they were based on a deed prepared in March 1970 but backdated to March 1969 in order to appear to be effective prior to the date set by statute, July 1969, for disallowing such deductions for the future. The investigation of this fraud by the Internal Revenue Service and the staff of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation remained incomplete and inconclusive, and a normal use of criminal process was rendered ineffective, solely by reason of the fact that Richard M. Nixon was President of the United States and that impeachment proceedings against him had been instituted, thus leaving the fair enforcement of the tax laws no recourse but through the exercise of the constitutional powers of impeachment and removal from office that are granted to the Congress of the United States.”

Under a general charge of obstructing “the investigation and prosecution of criminal acts committed against the people of the United States,” another set of articles cites the following alleged presidential actions:

> Authorizing payment of money to Convicted Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt in order to “induce” Hunt to “refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors.”

> Destroying evidence that was related to the investigation of the Watergate burglary.

> Withholding evidence from that investigation.

> Offering Executive clemency “to persons in return for their withholding vital information and evidence of criminal activities.”

> Inducing witnesses “to submit untruthful statements and testimony.”

>-Improperly disclosing grand jury information to his associates.

> Withholding evidence in the Ellsberg trial and offering an FBI post to the presiding judge in that trial.

The same set of articles lists another series of offenses under the general classification of subverting the processes of the Federal Government. They include instructing CIA officials to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate burglary, directing IRS officials to harass his political opponents, promising ambassadorships in return for political contributions, and creating the secret White House plumbers unit.

This set of articles includes two charges that have received relatively little attention so far but appear with surprising frequency in the proposed articles now under discussion. They deal with misleading public statements made by the President and his appointment of Kleindienst as Attorney General. The wording of these proposed charges:

“That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, did make and permitted others to make dishonest and misleading statements to the United States Congress, officials of the Executive Branch of the United States Government and to the people of the United States.

“Richard M. Nixon did confirm in a public statement his belief in the honesty and integrity of Richard Kleindienst, his nominee for Attorney General, knowing at that time that said Richard Kleindienst had presented untruthful testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

A proposed article on the President’s use of federal funds for improving his private property is expressed as follows: “He directed the Secret Service to authorize certain expenditures as necessary for the personal protection of the President, and directed the General Services Administration to make such expenditures and others from Government funds, for improvements and maintenance to properties owned by him, knowing that such expenditures were beyond the authority of these agencies and were for his personal benefit, in violation of Article 2, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which prohibits the President from receiving any emolument from the United States, other than a fixed compensation for his services, during his term of office.” The proposed articles also mention, but with less emphasis, Nixon’s secret approval of U.S. bombing in Cambodia and his impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds. He is also charged with “bribery” in raising milk-price supports after being assured of large campaign contributions by dairy producers.

The wording of impeachment articles also makes clear that when—and if —the House approves them they will not necessarily be its final word on this historic topic. Concludes one set of articles: “The House of Representatives saves to itself the liberty of exhibiting at any time further articles or other accusations or impeachment against the said Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, of replying to the answers he may make to the articles preferred against him, and of offering proof to each and every part of these articles and of any additional articles, accusations or impeachment, as the case may require.”

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