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Excerpt from Presdent Richard Nixon Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations.
President Richard Nixon: "Who, then, is to blame for what happened in this case? For specific criminal actions by specific individuals, those who committed those actions must, of course, bear the liability and pay the penalty. For the fact that alleged improper actions took place within the White House or within my campaign organization, the easiest course would be for me to blame those to whom I delegated the responsibility to run the campaign. But that would be a cowardly thing to do. I will not place the blame on subordinates - on people whose zeal exceeded their judgment and who may have done wrong in a cause they deeply believed to be right. In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here, in this office. I accept it. And I pledge to you tonight, from this office, that I will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our political processes in the years to come, long after I have left this office."
Excerpt from Presdent Richard Nixon Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations.
President Richard Nixon: "Some people, quite properly appalled at the abuses that occurred, will say that Watergate demonstrates the bankruptcy of the American political system. I believe precisely the opposite is true. Watergate represented a series of illegal acts and bad judgments by a number of individuals. It was the system that has brought the facts to light and that will bring those guilty to justice - a system that in this case has included a determined grand jury, honest prosecutors, a courageous judge, John Sirica, and a vigorous free press."
Excerpt from Presdent Richard Nixon Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations.
President Richard Nixon: "It is essential now that we place our faith in that system - and especially in the judicial system. It is essential that we let the judicial process go forward, respecting those safeguards that are established to protect the innocent as well as to convict the guilty. It is essential that in reacting to the excesses of others, we not fall into excesses ourselves. It is also essential that we not be so distracted by events such as this that we neglect the vital work before us, before this Nation, before America, at a time of critical importance to America and the world."
Excerpt from Presdent Richard Nixon Address to the Nation About the Watergate Investigations.
President Richard Nixon: "Since March, when I first learned that the Watergate affair might in fact be far more serious than I had been led to believe, it has claimed far too much of my time and my attention. Whatever may now transpire in the case, whatever the actions of the grand jury, whatever the outcome of any eventual trials, I must now turn my full attention - and I shall do so - once again to the larger duties of this office. I owe it to this great office that I hold, and I owe it to you -"
Pueblo Festival
Pueblo Festival - Library of Congress Field Documentation
Folk Dancing Festival
Folk Dancing Festival - Library of Congress Field Documentation
Pueblo Festival
Various MSs Pueblo tribe performing traditional Corn Dance for tourists, dancers are seen in traditional ceremonial clothing & holding evergreen sprigs & gourd rattles.
Pueblo Festival
GV abode structure with native Pueblo & tourists climbing up stairs & standing on roof. GVs people standing in front of adobe building, staying under shade cast by the structure. Brief MS old wooden wagon.
Folk Dancing Festival
MS two men holding up a beautiful Appalachian star pattern quilt. GVs of Caucasian men & women having fun, engaging in an Appalachian group style square dance.
Folk Dancing Festival
GVs of Caucasian men & women having fun, engaging in an Appalachian group style square dance.
Folk Dancing Festival
Folk Dancing Festival - Library of Congress Field Documentation
Folk Dancing Festival
MS/GV young Caucasian men & women having fun, engaging in an Appalachian group / ring style of square dance.
Folk Dancing Festival
GV/MS young Caucasian men & women having fun, engaging in an Appalachian group / ring style of square dance.
Folk Musicians
Folk Musicians - Library of Congress Field Documentation MS two Caucasian male musicians performing outside in rural location, one sings while the other sings & plays guitar, pan of folks watching, field microphone seen. MCU pan men lounging on edge of wooden porch, pan to woman seated on edge of porch with recording equipment, she gives a smile to the camera. MS same musicians singing & playing. MSs dapper Caucasian man in three piece suit seated in front of field microphone, singing & playing the banjo.
Folk Musicians & Dancers
Folk Musicians & Dancers - Library of Congress Field Documentation Great MS of dancing feet in tall leather boots performing traditional Appalachian style clogging steps. MCU hand playing banjo. Great GVs of informal shindig, man plays banjo while man & woman clog dance, smiling men stand around clapping to the rhythm. MS feet of man & woman clogging. MS man & woman dancing, spinning around with arms linked.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
Today the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities begins hearings in to the extent to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were involved in the 1972 Presidential election campaign. Senate Resolution 60 which establishes the Select Committee was adopted unanimously by the Senate on February the 7th, 1973. Under these provisions every member of the Senate joined in giving the Committee a broad mandate to investigate as thoroughly as possible, all the ramifications of the Watergate break in which occurred on Saturday June 17, 1972. Under the terms of the authorizing resolution, the Committee must complete its study and render its report on or before February 28th, 1974. Out of necessity, that report will reflect the considered judgment of the Committee on whatever new legislation is needed to help safeguard the electoral process through which the President of the United States is chosen.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
We are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of utmost gravity. The questions that have been raised in the wake of the June 17 break in, strike at the very undergirding of our democracy. If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of Democratic National Committee at the Watergate, where in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
The Founding Fathers having participated in the struggle against arbitrary power, comprehended some eternal truths respecting men and government. They knew that those who are entrusted with power are susceptible to disease of tyrants which George Washington rightly described as love of power and proneness to abuses. For that reason, they realized that the power of public offices should be defined by laws which they, as well as the People, are obligated to obey. A truth annunciated by Daniel Webster when he said that whatever government is not a government of laws is Despotism, let it be called what it may. To the end of ensuring a society governed by laws, these men embodied in our Constitution the enduring principles in which they so firmly believed - establishing the Legislature to make all laws, and Executive to carry them out, and a Judicial system to interpret them.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
Recently we have been faced with massive challenges to the historic framework created in 1787, with the most recent fears having been focused upon assertions by the administration of both parties, of Executive power over the Congress, for example in the empowerment of appropriated funds and the use of Executive privileges. These challenges, however, can and are being dealt with by the workings of the system itself. That is through the enactment of powerful statutes by the Congress and the rendering of decisions Courts upholding the law-making power of the Congress. In dealing with the challenges posed by the multitudinous allegations arising out of the Watergate Affair, however, the Select Committee has a task much more difficult and complex than dealing with intrusions of one branch of the government on the powers of the others. In most probe into assertions that the very system itself has been subverted and its foundations shaken.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
To safeguard the structural scheme of our governmental system, the Founding Fathers provided for an electoral process by which the elected officials of this nation should be chosen. The Constitution later adopted amendments, and more specifically, statutory law provide that electoral processes shall be conducted by the People outside the confines of the formal branches of the government and through a political process which must operate under the strictest of law and ethical guidelines but independent of the overwhelming power of the government itself. Only then can we be sure that each election truly reflects the will of the People. And that the electoral process cannot be made to serve as a mere handmaiden of a particular administration in power.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
If the allegations that have been made in the wake of the Watergate Affair are substantiated, there has been a very serious subversion of the integrity of the electoral process and the Committee will be obliged to consider the matter in which such a subversion effects the continued existence of this nation as a representative Democracy and how if we are to survive, such subversions may be prevented in the future.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
It has been asserted that the 1972 campaign was influenced by a wide variety of illegal or unethical activities, including the widespread wire tapping of the telephones, political headquarters, and even the residences of candidates and their campaign staffs, and of members of the press, by the publication of forged documents designed to defame certain candidates and enhance others under fraudulent means, the infiltration and disruption of an opponent s political organizations and gatherings, the raising and handling of campaign contributions through means designed to circumvent, either in letter or in spirit, the provisions of campaign disclosure acts, and even the acceptance of campaign contributions on based upon promises of illegal interference in government processes on behalf of the contributors.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, it has been alleged that following the Watergate break-in, there has been a massive attempt to cover up all improper activities, extending even so far as to pay off potential witnesses and in particular, the seven defendants in the Watergate trail in exchange for their promise to remain silent. Activities, which if true, represent interference in the integrity of the prosecutorial and judicial process of this nation. Moreover, there has been evidence of use of governmental instrumentalities in efforts to exercise political surveillance over candidate in the 1972 campaign.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
Let me emphasize at the outset that our judicial process thus far has convicted only the seven persons accused of burglarizing and wire tapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate complex on June 17. The hearings which we innate today are not designed to intensify or reiterate unfounded accusations or to poison further the political climate of our nation. On the contrary, it is my conviction, and that of the other Committee members, that the accusations that have been leveled and the evidence of wrong-doing that has surfaced, has cast a black cloud of distrust over our entire society. Our citizens do not know whom to believe. And many of them have concluded that all the processes of government have become so compromised that honest government has been rendered impossible. We believe that the health, if not the survival, of our social structure and of our form of government requires the most candid and public investigation of all the evidence and of all the acquisitions that have been leveled at any persons, at whatever level who were engaged in the 1972 campaign.