Before turning to a recitation of the facts as the Committee sees them, certain general observations based on the evidence before the Committee are appropriate. The Watergate affair reflects an alarming indifference displayed by some in high public office or position to concepts of morality and public responsibility and trust. Indeed, the conduct of many Watergate participants seems grounded on the belief that the ends justified the means, that the laws could be flaunted to maintain the present Administration in office. Unfortunately, the attitude that the law can be bent where expediency dictates was not confined to a few government and campaign officials. The testimony respecting the campaignfunding practices of some of the nation's largest and most respectable corporations furnishes clear examples of the subjugation of legal and ethical standards to pragmatic considerations. Hopefully, after the flood of Watergate revelations the country has witnessed, the public can now expect, at least for some years to come, a higher standard of conduct from its public officials and its business and professional leaders. Also, it is hopeful that the Watergate exposures have created what former Vice President Agnew has called a "post-Watergate morality" where respect for law and morality is paramount.

In approaching its task of recommending remedial legislation, the Committee is mindful that revelations of past scandals have often failed to produce meaningful reform. Too frequently there is a tendency to overreact in the wake of a particular scandal and burden the penal code with illconsidered laws directed to the specific-perhaps aberrational-conduct exposed. This proliferation of criminal laws has tended to over-complicate the penal code and, consequently, to impair the effectiveness of its administration. Moreover, legislation is, at best, a blunt weapon to combat immorality.

While this report does make certain specific recommendations for new criminal legislation or for strengthening existing criminal laws, the Committee has been careful to recommend only where the need is clear. Its major legislative recommendations relate to the creation of new institutions necessary to safeguard the electoral process, to provide the requisite checks against the abuse of executive power and to ensure the prompt and just enforcement of laws that already exist. Surely one of the most penetrating lessons of Watergate is that campaign practices must be effectively supervised and enforcement of the criminal laws vigorously pursued against all offenders-even those of high estate-if our free institutions are to survive.

The Committee's mandate was broad and its time to meet it brief. Nonetheless, the Committee believes that, through its efforts and those of others, the basic facts of the Watergate scandal have been exposed to public view and, as a result, the American people have been re-awakened to the task democracy imposes upon them steadfast vigilance of the conduct of the public officials they choose to lead them. This public awareness, in turn, has provided the atmosphere necessary to support other essential governmental responses to Watergate such as the work of the Special Prosecutor and the activities of the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment. Because the nation is now alert, because the processes of justice are now functioning and because the time is ripe for passage of new laws to safeguard the electoral process, the Committee is hopeful that despite the excesses of Watergate, the nation will return to its democratic ideals established almost 200 years ago.

1. The Committee and Its Staff

As noted, the United States Senate created the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities on February 7, 1973 by unanimous adoption of S. Res. 60. The seven Committee members appointed by the Senate leadership to answer the mandate of S. Res. 60 were Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.), Chairman; Howard H. Baker, Jr. (R-Tenn.), Vice Chairman; Herman E. Talmadge (D-Ga.); Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii); Joseph M. Montoya (D-N. Mex.); Edward J. Gurney (R-Fla.); and Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (R-Conn.).

Like the Select Committee formed to investigate the “Teapot Dome" scandals nearly a half century ago, the Senate "Watergate" Committee, as it was quickly renamed by the news media, was born in the crisis of a serious loss of confidence by the public in its national government. At the time the Committee was established, the trial of the Watergate burglars had been recently completed with the conviction of the seven defendants, all but two of whom had pleaded guilty. The trial was prosecuted on the theory that G. Gordon Liddy, former FBI agent and counsel for the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President,* had masterminded the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and that no higher campaign or White House officials were involved. Chief Judge John Sirica, the presiding judge, never accepted this theory. His repeated questions to witnesses and the prosecution staff indicated his disbelief that criminal involvement stopped at Liddy. Courageous investigative reporters raised

* Hereinafter often referred to as FCRP.

similar doubts in news stories and columns. The smell of coverup was in the air. S. Res. 60, passed after the Watergate trial concluded, evinces the Senate's belief that the Department of Justice could not be trusted fully to investigate and uncover the true story of Watergate. But no substantial indication of the magnitude of the Watergate affair had yet emerged.

The Senate Select Committee was given the broadest mandate to investigate completely not only the break-in of the DNC headquarters and any subsequent coverup but also all other illegal, improper or unethical conduct occurring during the Presidential campaign of 1972, including political espionage and campaign financing practices. All the investigative powers at the Senate's disposal were given the Committee. Thus the Committee had the power of subpena, the power to grant limited or "use" immunity to witnesses to obtain their testimony* and the power to enforce the Committee's subpenas by initiating contempt procedures.

On February 21, 1973, at its first organizational meeting, the Committee, on the recommendation of Chairman Ervin, unanimously appointed Professor Samuel Dash as Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the Committee. Professor Dash had formerly been District Attorney in Philadelphia, an active trial lawyer and Chairman of the Section of Criminal Law of the American Bar Association. At the time of his appointment, Mr. Dash was Professor of Law and Director of the Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure of Georgetown University Law Center. Shortly afterwards, Vice-Chairman Baker, acting under the provisions of S. Res. 60, appointed as Minority Counsel Mr. Fred Thompson, a trial lawyer and former Assistant United States Attorney in Nashville, Ten

nessee.

During the month of March, the Chief Counsel selected as Deputy Chief Counsel Mr. Rufus Edmisten, who also served as Chief Counsel of the Senate Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and his Assistant Chief Counsel for the three areas of the investigation-Watergate break-in and coverup, campaign practices and campaign financing. David M. Dorsen was assigned supervision of the campaign financing phase, including investigation of the milk fund affairs. Mr. Dorsen was specially aided in the milk fund investigation by Assistant Counsel Alan S. Weitz. Mr. Terry Lenzner took charge of the campaign practices phase and also headed the investigation into the Hughes/Rebozo matter. Serving as Mr.

To grant "use" immunity is to ensure a witness that his testimony, or the fruits of his testimony, will not be used against him directly or indirectly in any subsequent criminal procedure. See 18 U.S.C. § 6002-6005.

Lenzner's principal aides in those investigations were Assistant Counsel Marc Lackritz and investigator Scott Armstrong. Mr. James Hamilton was assigned responsibility for the Watergate break-in and coverup phase; because of the rapid change in events, Messrs. Dorsen and Lenzner also spent considerable time on this phase. Mr. Hamilton, with the aid of Assistant Counsel Ronald D. Rotunda and Special Counsel Richard B. Stewart and a number of expert consultants,* was also responsible for most of the Committee's litigation efforts, including the preparation of the pleadings and briefs in its suit against the President, and, with Mr. Dorsen, supervised the investigation into the so-called Responsiveness Program. Both Mr. Dorsen and Mr. Lenzner had been Assistant United States Attorneys in the Southern District of New York, and Mr. Hamilton was a trial attorney with the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling.

Mr. Carmine Bellino, former FBI agent and a veteran of numerous important Congressional investigations, was appointed Chief Investigator. Professor Arthur Miller of George Washington Law School was named Chief Consultant to the staff. Minority Counsel Fred Thompson appointed as his chief assistant and investigator Donald Sanders, a former FBI agent and Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the House Internal Security Committee.

Appointment of other lawyers, investigators, secretarial personnel and research assistants followed over the next several months bringing the staff to a peak strength of approximately ninety persons by August of 1973.

2. Investigative Procedures

On March 21,1973, while the Committee staff was still in its formative stages, James McCord, one of the convicted Watergate defendants, began the unraveling of the Watergate story by transmitting a sealed letter to Judge Sirica. On the morning of March 23, which had been set by Judge Sirica for the sentencing of the Watergate defendants, Judge Sirica in open Court unsealed the letter and read aloud McCord's first accusations of perjury at the trial and coverup.

At 1:00 p.m. the same day, Mr. McCord, through his attorney, called the Select Committee's Chief Counsel and offered to give information to the Committee. The Chief Counsel met with Mr. McCord and his counsel that afternoon and the following day, and Mr. McCord testified before an exe

* Professor Arthur S. Miller, Professor Jerome A. Barron, Professor Donald S. Burris, Professor Sherman Cohn and Eugene Gressman. The Committee is particularly grateful to Professor Stewart who devoted many hours of his considerable talents to the Committee's litigation efforts.

cutive session of the full Committee early the following week. McCord's revelations to the Committee were the first indication that former Attorney General John Mitchell, Counsel to the President John W. Dean, III and Deputy Director of the Committee for the Re-election of the President* Jeb Stuart Magruder had participated in the planning and discussion with G. Gordon Liddy respecting a large-scale covert intelligence operation that ultimately resulted in the Watergate break-in.

Although McCord had been a participant in the break-in, he had obtained information about the planning meetings and the later payments of "hush" money to purchase silence through discussions with Liddy and others. Thus, the involvement of higher officials in Watergate activities could not be fully proved through McCord's testimony, since it was largely hearsay. Although a Senate investigating committee may receive hearsay testimony, the Select Committee decided, because of its desire to limit unfounded rumor and speculation, to employ a higher standard of proof for the establishment of crucial facts. It was thus decided that McCord's testimony would not be presented in public session unless it could be corroborated by other evidence.

Accordingly, the staff began an intensive investigation. Secretaries to key officials at CRP, the White House and the Department of Justice, as well as other staff personnel, were questioned and their records subpenaed and examined. Gradually, corroboration for McCord's story emerged. A secretary's diary was uncovered which showed meetings in Mr. Mitchell's Justice Department office on January 27 and February 4, 1972, attended by Messrs. Mitchell, Dean, Magruder and Liddy. A CRP staff member remembered Liddy's agitated search for an easel in the CRP offices on the morning of January 27. (McCord had told the Committee that, according to Liddy, Liddy had, that day made a show and tell presentation respecting his intelligence plan in the Attorney General's office using large cards on an easel.) A secretary recalled seeing Liddy with several large white cards wrapped in brown paper in the CRP office prior to the January 27 meeting. The former FCRP treasurer, Hugh Sloan, informed the Committee of Magruder's effort to suborn his perjury before the Grand Jury. Sloan also gave evidence as to the large amounts of cash paid to Liddy with Mr. Mitchell's approval for purposes concerning which Sloan said Maurice Stans told him "I do not want to know and you don't want to know." (2 Hearings 539)

As hundreds of details were collected, it became clear that the Committee could corroborate with circumstantial evidence * Hereinafter often referred to as CRP.