United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks. Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. May 17, 1973. Use catalog # 514927 for complete opening statement.
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.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
My colleagues on the Committee and I are determined to uncover all of the relevant facts surrounding these matters and to spare no one, whatever his station in life may be, in our efforts to accomplish that goal. At the same time, I want to emphasize that the purpose of these hearing is not prosecutorial or judicial, but rather investigative and informative. No one is more cognizant than I of the separation of powers issues that hover over these hearings.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
The Committee s fully aware of the ongoing Grand Jury proceedings that have taken place in several areas of the country. And of the fact that criminal indictments have been returned by one of these Grand Juries. Like all Americans, the members of this Committee are vitally interested in seeing that the judicial processes operate effectively, and fairly and without interference from any other branch of the government. The investigation of this Select Committee was born of crisis, unabated as of this very time. The crisis of a mounting loss of confidence by American citizens in the integrity of the electoral process which is the bedrock of our democracy. The American People are looking to this Committee as a representative off all the Congress for enlightenment and guidance regarding the details of the allegations regarding the subversion of our electoral and political processes. As the elected representative of the People, we would be derelict in our duty to them if we failed to pursue our mission expeditiously, fully and with utmost fairness.
United States Senate Watergate Committee. Excerpt from Senator Sam Ervin opening remarks.
The aim of the Committee is to provide full and open public testimony in order that the nation can proceed toward the healing of the wounds that now afflict the body politic. It is that aim that we are here to pursue today