Ron Rosenbaum: Why Hillary doesn't mention her work on Nixon's impeachment
[Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.]
... I'd always thought that her work on the Impeachment Committee was an unambiguously shining moment of her career: Hillary I enters politics. Even if, as I believe, the committee failed to find out the full truth of Nixon's Watergate crimes, the Big Truth (I'll get to that), she was a junior staffer, and any such failings surely weren't her fault. And even if the committee failed to find Nixon guilty of the primal crime of Watergate, ordering the break-in, the committee demonstrated that America was a nation in which a reigning president had to submit to the rule of law, where the commander in chief could be challenged and forced to leave office by constitutional means, not coups.
I covered the impeachment hearings to the bitter end when Nixon resigned in August 1974. (I was in the East Room of the White House when he "teared up" making his farewell before coptering off to exile.) I have no memory of seeing young Hillary Rodham in the hearing room, but I remember thinking at the time of the Impeachment Committee staff as heroic seekers of truth.
But Hillary's boss on the staff, Jerome Zeifman, asserts now that one reason she's downplayed her Impeachment Committee service is that she has something to hide.
He accuses her of "unethical" conduct, says that "Hillary … lied to me" and that she was a pawn in a Kennedy-orchestrated conspiracy to manipulate the impeachment hearings. And he claims he has a witness to corroborate this characterization:
"After President Nixon's resignation," Zeifman writes, "a young lawyer, who shared an office with Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel—as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:
'John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me' [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics]. Labovitz said, "That came from Yale." I said, "You mean Burke Marshall [Sen. Ted Kennedy's chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules]. Labovitz said, "Yes." His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.' "
The "dilatory tactics" Zeifman alleges were part of what he portrays as a Kennedy clan strategy to stretch out the impeachment hearings (which ended in August '74, when the so-called "smoking gun" tape—which revealed Nixon attempting to use the CIA to cover up a White House connection to the break-in—caused Nixon to lose even hard-core GOP loyalist support and resign). Zeifman claims the Kennedy strategy was to keep Richard Nixon in office so a liberal (perhaps a Kennedy) could run in 1976 against a damaged president Nixon rather than the relatively unblemished GOP Vice President Gerald Ford.
Zeifman claims that to implement this strategy, Hillary attempted to revise the procedural rules for the Impeachment Committee, potentially opening up divisive delays. Zeifman also asserts that a "second objective of the strategy of delay was to avoid a Senate impeachment trial, in which as a defense Nixon might assert that Kennedy had authorized far worse abuses of power than Nixon's effort to 'cover up' the Watergate burglary (which Nixon had not authorized or known about in advance). In short, the crimes of Kennedy included the use of the Mafia to attempt to assassinate Castro, as well as the successful assassinations of Diem in Vietnam and Lumumba in the Congo."...
Read entire article at Slate
... I'd always thought that her work on the Impeachment Committee was an unambiguously shining moment of her career: Hillary I enters politics. Even if, as I believe, the committee failed to find out the full truth of Nixon's Watergate crimes, the Big Truth (I'll get to that), she was a junior staffer, and any such failings surely weren't her fault. And even if the committee failed to find Nixon guilty of the primal crime of Watergate, ordering the break-in, the committee demonstrated that America was a nation in which a reigning president had to submit to the rule of law, where the commander in chief could be challenged and forced to leave office by constitutional means, not coups.
I covered the impeachment hearings to the bitter end when Nixon resigned in August 1974. (I was in the East Room of the White House when he "teared up" making his farewell before coptering off to exile.) I have no memory of seeing young Hillary Rodham in the hearing room, but I remember thinking at the time of the Impeachment Committee staff as heroic seekers of truth.
But Hillary's boss on the staff, Jerome Zeifman, asserts now that one reason she's downplayed her Impeachment Committee service is that she has something to hide.
He accuses her of "unethical" conduct, says that "Hillary … lied to me" and that she was a pawn in a Kennedy-orchestrated conspiracy to manipulate the impeachment hearings. And he claims he has a witness to corroborate this characterization:
"After President Nixon's resignation," Zeifman writes, "a young lawyer, who shared an office with Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel—as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:
'John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me' [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics]. Labovitz said, "That came from Yale." I said, "You mean Burke Marshall [Sen. Ted Kennedy's chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules]. Labovitz said, "Yes." His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.' "
The "dilatory tactics" Zeifman alleges were part of what he portrays as a Kennedy clan strategy to stretch out the impeachment hearings (which ended in August '74, when the so-called "smoking gun" tape—which revealed Nixon attempting to use the CIA to cover up a White House connection to the break-in—caused Nixon to lose even hard-core GOP loyalist support and resign). Zeifman claims the Kennedy strategy was to keep Richard Nixon in office so a liberal (perhaps a Kennedy) could run in 1976 against a damaged president Nixon rather than the relatively unblemished GOP Vice President Gerald Ford.
Zeifman claims that to implement this strategy, Hillary attempted to revise the procedural rules for the Impeachment Committee, potentially opening up divisive delays. Zeifman also asserts that a "second objective of the strategy of delay was to avoid a Senate impeachment trial, in which as a defense Nixon might assert that Kennedy had authorized far worse abuses of power than Nixon's effort to 'cover up' the Watergate burglary (which Nixon had not authorized or known about in advance). In short, the crimes of Kennedy included the use of the Mafia to attempt to assassinate Castro, as well as the successful assassinations of Diem in Vietnam and Lumumba in the Congo."...