Opening Statement To The House
Judiciary Committee,
Proceedings On The Impeachment Of Richard Nixon
by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

July 25, 1974
Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel
in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity
of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it
has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance
as possible.
Earlier today we heard the beginning of the
Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, "We, the people". It is a very
eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed, on the seventeenth of
September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people". I felt somehow
for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out
by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision
I have finally been included in "We, the people".
Today I am an inquisitor. I believe hyperbole
would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right
now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am
not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion,
the destruction of the Constitution.
"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for
the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" (Federalist, no.
65). The subject of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the
misconduct of public men." That is what we are talking about. In other words,
the jurisdiction comes from the abuse of violation of some public trust. It is
wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to
assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that
member must be convinced that the president should be removed from office. The
Constitution doesn't say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential
check in the hands of this body, the legislature, against and upon the encroachment
of the executive. In establishing the division between the two branches of the
legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse
and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very
astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges the same person.
We know the nature of impeachment. We have
been talking about it awhile now. "It is chiefly designed for the president and
his high ministers" to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle"
the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national
inquest into the public men." (Hamilton, Federalist, no. 65.). The framers confined
in the congress the power if need be, to remove the president in order to strike
a delicate balance between a president swollen with power and grown tyrannical,
and preservation of the independence of the executive. The nature of impeachment
is a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim; the federal
convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors
and discounted and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to be used only
for great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention.
And in the Virginia ratification convention: "We do not trust our liberty to a
particular branch. We need one branch to check the others."
The North Carolina ratification convention:
"No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity."
"Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail
to agitate the passions of the whole community," said Hamilton in the Federalist
Papers, no. 65. "And to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical
to the accused." I do not mean political parties in that sense.
The drawing of political lines goes to the
motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines
of the constitutional term "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow
Wilson who said that "nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain
law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation
so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else
can."
Common sense would be revolted if we engaged
upon this process for insurance, campaign finance reform, housing, environmental
protection, energy sufficiency, mass transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed
to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being
petty. We are trying to be big because the task we have before us is a big one.
This morning, in a discussion of the evidence,
we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse
of the CIA by the president is thin. We are told that that evidence is insufficient.
What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the president
did know on June 23, 1972. The president did know that it was Republican money,
that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which
was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June 17.
What the president did know on June 23 was
the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the
break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation
in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables
designed to discredit the Kennedy administration.
We were further cautioned today that perhaps
these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence
forthcoming from the president. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if
the president wants to supply that material, the committee sits here.
The fact is that yesterday, the American people
waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their president
would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.
At this point I would like to juxtapose a few
of the impeachment criteria with some of the president's actions.
Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the
Virginia ratification convention. "If the president be connected in any suspicious
manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him,
he may be impeached."
We have heard time and time again that the
evidence reflects payment to the defendants of money. The president had knowledge
that these funds were being paid and that these were funds collected for the 1972
presidential campaign.
We know that the president met with Mr. Henry
Petersen twenty-seven times to discuss matters related to Watergate and immediately
thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr.
Petersen was receiving and transmitting to the president. The words are "if the
president be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds
to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached."
Justice Story: "Impeachment is intended for
occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole
people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties
from violations."
We know about the Huston plan. We know about
the break-in of the psychiatrist's office. We know that there was absolute complete
direction in August 1971 when the president instructed Ehrlichman to "do whatever
is necessary." This instruction led to a surreptitious entry into Dr. Fielding's
office.
"Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties
from violation."
The South Carolina ratification convention
impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their
public trust."
Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in
and continuing to the present time, the president has engaged in a series of public
statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government
prosecutors. Moreover, the president has made public announcements and assertions
bearing on the Watergate case which the evidence will show he knew to be false.
These assertions, false assertions, impeachable,
those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray their public trust."
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention:
"A president is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."
The Constitution charges the president with
the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the president
has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregarded the secrecy of
grand jury proceedings, concealed surreptitious entry, attempted to compromise
a federal judge while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of
criminal justice.
"A president is impeachable if he attempts
to subvert the Constitution."
If the impeachment provision in the Constitution
of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that
eighteenth century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth-century paper
shredder. Has the president committed offenses and planned and directed and acquiesced
in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That is the question.
We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer
the question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations,
guide our debate, and guide our decision."
Source: A
transcript and an audio file of this speech are located at https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/bjordan.html