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bjbj Naftali: Talking about pressure on the Congressman. When do you remember Tip O Neill
starting to tell him, s move this along. Brien: Oh, it came early and, again, relationships
and trust became very important because Tip O Neill has shown great encouragement in supporting
Rodino s choice to lead this investigation in the Judiciary Committee, but Tip O Neill
was a man of action and Rodino was a very methodical person and those always didn t
match up well. So on a regular basis Tip the large Tip O Neill and the diminutive Peter
Rodino would be getting together and Tip would be putting his finger on him saying, Peter,
we have to move this process along, you know, and Peter would say, Yes. I understand. I
understand. This went on a regular basis, both informally and then when the Chairman
would be called over the Speaker s office formally, that this process had to move forward
and each time Again, being as it turns out historically that they re all great master
politicians, he bought more time. He d always buy more time. It s not that he said d go
to the staff. He d go to John Dore and to the staff and what he had to do was give them
the time. Again, he was extremely protective of the staff because they had to do that work
isolated from the pressures, the political pressures even though we started this conversation
it s a political process. He wanted them away from that pressure. So whatever had to be
absorbed he would take that pressure or other key members other allies, but no pressure
on the staff and there was constant effort to put pressure on the staff where they would
call John Doar and others, What s going on? Of course, John, as we know, is one of the
more discreet people in the world, but this is enormous pressure. First of all, it taught
me, just watching Congressmen, just how to deal with pressure. He just absorbed it and
I think it bothered him. Yes, it bothered him. I mean, he s human, but he felt the process
was so important that this had to be done in a way in the end that was considered bipartisan
or nonpartisan and that he felt that you could not rush this. Naftali: Did he get a little
impatient at any point with Mr. Doar? Brien: Oh yes. Oh yes. That s another story. Naftali:
Well, no. Let s hear it. Brien: Yes because John was so methodical and so cautious - John
is very cautious and many evenings John would come over, in his way I hope you get a chance
to talk to him. Just an extraordinary human being, but yes and the Chairman, in his way
would say, I think we have to move this process on. That was why he would ask me to help if
I could sit and talk to John and help the process and the answer was usually, no. That
John needed the time he needed. There was some give, but again, deep respect. I mean,
that s the keyword. He respected John. He respected the staff. He respected what they
felt and he was willing to take the pressure. Naftali: So the pressure would come from his
fellow Committee members in addition to Tip O Neill. Do you remember? Brien: Jeez, first
and foremost, first and foremost. Naftali: Do you remember who were some of the tough
ones or tougher ones? Brien: Well, on both sides. On the Republican side, you had people
like Congressman Sandman. I think he was from New Jersey just. He was way out there, but
there were more important Republicans. There was a Congressman in California. Naftali:
Wiggins? Brien: Wiggins, very important, who Congressmen deeply respected and he was a
very strong supporter of President Nixon. Very strong supporter and he was putting enormous
pressure. s move this. Let s conclude this. This is being dragged on. This is partisan.
This was etcetera, etcetera and respect had to be paid there. On the other side, you had
sort of a young Congressman Conyers. You had Congressman Waldie from California. You had
Father Drinan. You had Jack Brooks first and foremost, very powerful figure in the House
and on the Committee, just putting enormous pressure on the Congressmen on a regular basis
to bring this to a conclusion. s get some articles. Let s get some votes here. Looking
back on it, you d say how he held this together just by sheer force of personality and he
was never confrontational. You couldn't get him in an argument. So it s sort of the worst
kind of opponent to have. You couldn t draw him out because he just would absorb it. He
would listen to you. He would. He would understand you and then he would answer you and have
no idea what he said because you never knew what he said to members. It wasn t me because
he would just talk in these riddles and it was just extraordinary and you just didn t
know Hm. Did he say we re going to move forward or not? Naftali: Give us an example, for instance.
Brien: Oh, I can t remember anymore. It s so hard, but I remember it s sort of you had
to get what we used to call the Chairman Speke. You had to understand, he had to just come
out of the meeting and say, Okay, this is what he meant, because he just never said
anything directly to you. Naftali: But he knew what he wanted, right? Brien: Exactly.
He knew exactly what he wanted. He was telling you, but he never told you in a direct way
and I guess one of the reasons I got hired was because I sort of understood, I guess,
what he was saying and could understand him very well actually. No, he was very sure what
he was saying. He just never said it in a way that, say, you and I would say something,
but his outreach was extraordinary. He felt that he had to keep lines of communication
to a broad spectrum of the membership on the Committee and in those days, remember, the
Chairman was a very powerful figure and rank was very important. If you re a freshman,
you re lucky you ever got to speak to the Chairman. On the Republican side, every once
in a while he d invite Congressman Cohen from Maine up to his office to get his thoughts.
He d invite Barbara Jordan up. Charlie Rangel. These were all freshmen and then on a regular
basis, which I don t think many people knew. I was sent out on a regular basis to meet
with a group of members just to make sure that they felt that they were being connected
to the Congressman Congressman Flowers of Alabama, Congressman Mann. These all became
very critical people. He already identified in his mind very early who was really important
here in terms of that would have an important public impact. There was how these people
voted yea or nay would become very important in the outcome didn t know how they d vote
at the time but he felt it was very important that they trust him, that they felt that both
personal contact and a rare contact from myself and others, that they had a line, that they
felt their voices were being heard. I mean, this was never reported or anything, but on
a regular basis I would make the rounds of members and just talk to them. I wasn t a
lawyer. I didn t talk particularly about the case. They would tell me what they thought
which I would then come back to the members or come back to the Congressman. He would
have a phone conversation with them, invite them over. So this was his way of keeping
his Committee members intact in a very low key way, where they had a these people s lives,
their political lives, were at stake. They had to put a lot of trust in him and they
have their own lives or own political lives to worry about and they knew this was an extraordinary
undertaking, which had the whole nation s attention. So they had to trust him and he
had to build their trust up. Naftali: This group that you d go and see, did you see them
individually or as a group? Brien: No, individually. Naftali: Did they include the group that would
be the swing Republicans, like Hogan and Railsback or were you just meeting with the southern
Democrats. Brien: Southern, mostly southern Democrats. Naftali: In the beginning where
were they leaning or where they leaning anywhere on the issue of the President? Brien: Oh,
I think very reluctant very, very reluctant on both sides of the apple. I mean the early
readings and, again, Congress would never ask the question. They would never because
you d never want somebody to answer. I ve learned from him never ask a question til
you know the answer. So he would never ask them how you lean. That question would never
come up in any form, but his political instincts, he understood these people were very, very
reluctant to bring any charges against a President of the United States. It didn t matter who
the President was and there was some partisanship there, but you had a very skeptical center
audience that he thought were key. So his conclusion very early on was they re going
to decide. It s this group that you talked about Republicans and Democrats were going
to decide this issue and that they either felt the case against the President was substantial
or not and that was the strategy from day one. Naftali: In the beginning and it s a
long time ago, but do you think it mattered to the Chairman which direction it went? Brien:
No. It sounds corny. He was a patriot. He really was a patriot. He was a great institutionalist
and it s almost like being picked for a jury. I don't know if you ever were picked of a
jury? All of a sudden you take on this responsibility. You do oh my God. I m a juror. I think that
s the way the Congressman looked at this. This extraordinary duty was thrust upon him
and that was more than anything he ever thought about his life or prepared for and he did
not know what the outcome would be. I mean, that s why it turned out historically. He
was the right person. You would not know that going down the line of who you re going to
pick. You know, that s fate. His demeanor, his intellectual strength, his institutional
belief, his sense of being from immigrant roots, he was extraordinarily patriotic and
that you would be charged with this task of potentially taking the President of the United
States it was in some way unimaginable to him at the beginning. Unimaginable and yet,
as he said, once the process begins it had to have a conclusion. Naftali: Mr. Doar begins
to present the Statements of Information May 9th. So now we ve been at it for some months,
a lot of pressure. Finally, the material is coming up. Again, I ve read that a number
of the members were just bored and confused. In the beginning, how did the Chairman view
the process as Mr. Doar began to lay out the information? Brien: He thought it was too
it wasn t crisp, too legal. Again, these are all lawyers, but it was too dense. Lawyers
over write anything and I think that was his and that s rather a flip statement, but he
said, This has to be understandable, but it has to be understandable to the members. It
s more important this has to be understandable to the American citizens. This is just not
understandable. He said, You have to make these points that you've just mentioned understandable
to the members and eventually to the American public. So go back, and over time, these had
to be made more understandable. Naftali: For six weeks? Do you remember that? Brien: Mm-hmm.
There was just a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure and there was a lot of back
and forth. Remember, we did have a hundred and something lawyers here. It was difficult
and again, as we said in the beginning, this is a political process. This is not a legal
process. Naftali: So does Mr. Doar then, he finally gives a much more impassioned speech?
Brien: Yes. Naftali: Some have said it s because the Chairman talked to him. Brien: Well, I
think the Chairman had many conversations. He and John had many conversations and I think
Mr. Doar has just decided he just would Naftali: But do you remember that moment? Brien: I
remember that moment. Naftali: Please tell us. Brien: Well, I mean, I just remember that
s one of those conversations in the evening. He said, Do you accept that this expression
was used in that stage, but Jesus, you just have to step this up. He said, You have to
do something at that table. Again, he never talked this way. That s the thing of it, but
John Doar fully understood that this was it, that he had it make the case to these members.
Whatever the case would be he had to make the case and I think John sort of went home
and processed that and came back and there s a lot of back and forth. Naftali: Given
how important this was in this history of the case, did the Congressman present ? There
was a famous Congressman speech or Chairman s speech, but did he show emotion when he
Brien: Oh yes. There was emotion here. First and foremost, Peter Rodino was Italian, so
he s very measured, but there were times when he could get emotional in his measured way.
There was no doubt that John and staff understood what had to be done and I think that was the
relationship, but again, by then there was such incredible trust between them. Great
differences of opinion why wouldn t there be? I mean, again, these were monumental decisions.
I can remember the night moving off your subject for a minute. I remember the night we had
to send a letter to the President. I mean, the debate went deep into the night. I mean,
do you actually send a letter to the President of the United States? Every day we had to
make these kinds of decisions. We had no guidance. So all of these things every issue, every
legal issues, every political had to be discussed, thought through, talked out. re dealing with
an intellectually powerful staff on both sides of the aisle, just powerful, intellectually
powerful people. In terms of their intellectual heft and then you had to sort of bring that
political process to it. So there was a lot of coming there was a lot of a debate. I don
t think there was an easy day in this process from the day it begins to the day it ended.
Naftali: Well, the story of the letter. This comes after the White House has issued its
transcripts. Brien: Right. Naftali: ve interviewed former Senator Cohen who wanted to participate
in that letter. Brien: Brought to the Chairman s office? Naftali: This was a really hard
event for him because he felt sort of left in the cold here. Do you remember? He was,
at that point, your only Republican ally on this particular issue. Brien: Correct. Naftali:
I think. Brien: Right and he had been courted, right. Courted is the wrong word, but he certainly
had access to the Congressman. There had been conversations because the Congressman, again,
he thought he'd be important even though he was a young member, he thought that Mr. Cohen
would be helpful to the process. Naftali: But in the end Cohen s draft of the letter
is not the one that was sent. Brien: No, it wasn Naftali: re smiling. Brien: It just wasn
t, that s all s called politics. Naftali: Okay. The Democratic members needed to be
satisfied. Brien: Correct and also I think the Congressman decided what the correct letter
had to be and he was deeply appreciative of Congressman Cohen s input. Naftali: s talk
a bit about the tapes. Did you listen to any of them? Brien: Mm-hmm. Naftali: What affect
did they have on you? Brien: Not much, actually. The Congressman asked me a couple of times
to listen to tapes and I tried not to. In this process again, this is going back I didn
t want to get personal. In other words, I wanted to keep a distance in this. Someone
remarked to me, which I think is a compliment. They said, You never said any anti-Nixon word
ever. It was a reporter said that to me all those years later. They were telling me I
had dinner with a reporter years ago. I mean, recently, Elizabeth Drew, who covered the
event for The New Yorker at the time, she said, You know, all those years you never
all those times we covered you, you never said a word about Nixon ever, and I think
that came from the Chairman. It also came from a personal not that I didn t have a view,
but I didn t think it was my place to be talking, but to get there you had to keep some distance.
So I wasn t actually very curious about the tapes. There was enormous curiosity with the
thing and I wasn t that curious. It wasn t my job. It wasn t where I fit in. Nobody on
the Committee s going to ask me what I thought of tapes and so I sort of stayed out. It wasn
t my so to speak. So I didn t have any opinion and then I ve never even thought about listening
to them again. Naftali: The Chairman listened to some tapes? Brien: Yes, he did. He was
bothered. Naftali: Can you tell us more? Brien: Well, he was bothered at the language. He
was bothered by sort of the tone. It s the same rack as everybody. I think he was surprised
about President Nixon. A lot of tapes surprised him. I don't know a lot of the tapes, but
I mean, some of the tapes he d come back and we d talk a little about it at night. He was
bothered, I thought. He didn t think some of the things were Again, he was very proper.
He d just think some of the things were very proper, language and that, but we never talked
about nor did he ever comment about the substance of the case, the substance of the tapes, but
I can tell you just bothered by some of the tapes and the condition of the President.
Naftali: Did you see a sort of a shift in his position? Brien: No. Whatever he and I
talked about never went beyond he and I from day one to that last day. It s just not what
his views were, but he tried to keep intellectually as best as he could, he tried to keep centered.
Naftali: Was it hard for him to keep centered? Brien: Not really because it fit his personality.
In other words, he was not very partisan so it didn t fit his personality and I think
the obligations so overwhelmed him and put just a weight on him and I think an important
quality all of us had, he was very fearful in the sense of not doing the right thing
and I think fear is a wonderful emotion to have at a time like this, that it keeps you
on track. So he didn t have to time to get out and be bothered by this. The whole thing
was so overwhelming. Naftali: I apologize for the analogy, but we were a little like
the canary in the mineshaft. When you were out talking to these conservative Democrats,
when did you start seeing a shift because they re talking to you what they re thinking
and, obviously, they ultimately vote against President Nixon? Is it slow? Brien: Very slow.
It s a very slow process. We would talk about that, but never publicly. Never to the staff,
to John s staff actually, about where we thought these people were. That was a conversation
that was very deeply held. It may have gone, though, I ve no knowledge. It may have gone
to the Speaker or to someone like that. I mean, we sort of knew what the case was at
a certain point. Naftali: Voting starts July 27th. It s a long time ago, but did you think
you had a majority for Article One? Brien: Yes. Naftali: Did you think that a month before
or was it a week before, a day? Brien: I don t remember when, but we had talked about it
as those night approached, those days approached, that he thought that the case had been made.
That s a better way to put it, actually. He thought the case had been made against the
President and he thought that the key scent that he felt was so important probably as
a Democrat that they believed that the case had been made. Naftali: When Railsback and
Cohen and Hogan are meeting with Flowers is somebody telling you about that? Brien: Flowers
and I had a good relationship. He died very young. We had a good relationship. So we d
talk about, you know d get a sense of where people were. He talked to the Chairman Flowers
would not to me. Naftali: ve seen the images of the debate. Flowers would be very emotional.
He was very emotional. Brien: Very. Naftali: Tell us a little bit about other kinds of
fears. This is a very tense Washington, isn t it? Brien: Well, it was an incredible time
looking back on it. It s hard for Americans to think now. I mean, we had some of the most
senior members of an administration, some of the Justice Department, go to prison, being
charged with serious crimes and there was fear. There was fear on my part that we were
going to go to jail. I mean, that sounds crazy, but I thought, man, these people will put
us in jail. They can do anything. I mean you couldn t trust the FBI, you couldn t trust
the Justice Department and you couldn't trust your government, was our feeling. It didn
t affect because we were only interested in one thing. Why did the President In other
words, we had to sort of separate all of these out from our duty, but we re citizens and
we re living in Washington, DC. There s no doubt we felt we were all tapped and under
some kind of investigations. I mean, we just took that as our course, that that s sort
of the environment and we just had to be extreme cautious on how we conducted business. Naftali:
Did you have some conversations outdoors so that you wouldn t be heard? Brien: Oh, I had
conversations everywhere. I don t remember. You're just cautious on what you said, but
I wasn t so worried about that, but I thought I never served the government again. I thought
that was the most it was obviously an extraordinary experience, but I couldn t do that again.
The pressure was just so overwhelming on everybody. Forget me and I had the least of the pressure.
It was on all these people, but it just was you were drained at the end. You were just
an enormously draining and not a very happy experience. It wasn t a very happy experience.
There was nothing pleasurable about doing this. You don t look back and say, Well, that
was a great job. It wasn t a great job. I thought my responsibilities were the least
of all. I was a young staffer. It was these members. I don't think anybody thought it
was a great experience. I think they think historically they did an incredible thing
this process to go through and that the American public accepted this process but I never heard
a member say this was on a personal level sort of one of their highlights. Naftali:
Do you remember anything from the moments after Article One was passed? Where were you?
Brien: I think I was in the back. I was in the Committee apartment. I don t remember.
Naftali: Did you know how the Chairman looked afterwards? Brien: He was exhausted. That
s all been public...he came back and he cried after it was over, just an emotional experience.
It wasn t the only he had cried during the process, but it was a very emotional night
that I remember. Naftali: Can you recall another time he cried? Brien: Well, he s Italian so
he s very emotional. So he cried a number of times. There were a couple of other times
that he had tears sort of through the experience. I think the pressure, the emotion of the whole
process, sort of the darkest days of this process where there was just a lot of pressure
on all of us, but then there s another piece when I told them that this was going be televised.
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