Word: dashes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dean and James W. McCord become two heroes in Chief Counsel, apparently because they cooperated with Dash and provided evidence crucial to the success of the hearings. Dean, for example, talked secretly to Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and persuaded him that his testimony was explosive, thereby pushing Weicker into voting with the Democrats to grant Dean immunity from prosecution. Dash needed Weicker's vote to form a two-thirds majority on that question and others, so the chief counsel was grateful to Dean for his testimony and his political astuteness...
McCord, of course, is viewed throughout as one witness who started the avalanche of disclosures with his letter to Judge John J. Sirica and his subsequent testimony to the committee. With both Dean and McCord, Dash had to work slowly and cautiously, but because they finally cooperated, Dash treats them kindly in this book...
...although he fought the despicable Republican architects of what Dash sees as a blueprint for a police state, becomes as much an enemy as Baker. Dash welcomes Cox and James Vorenberg, professor of Law, to Washington, but soon recoils in horror as Cox suggests that the time for the Senate's investigation has ended. Cox argued at the time that he was fully competent to investigate and prosecute the Watergate transgressions himself and didn't want the Senate committee interfering or prejudicing possible trials with excessive publicity. Dash, naturally, defended his position with vigor, and reports the following exchange...
...committee's use of computer programs written by the Library of Congress for information storage and retrieval, one of the most interesting and little emphasized aspects of the investigation, becomes part of the Watergate story in Dash's book. After all the documentary evidence was catalogued, Dash was able to press a button and have a print-out of, for example, all testimony about the March 23, 1973, meeting between Dean and Nixon. Or he could have all the evidence relating to transactions between McCord and the comic ex-New York cop, Tony Ulasewicz. Access to this kind of this...
More than anything else, the issue of the tapes illustrates the irony that pervades the last few chapters of Chief Counsel. On the whole, the latter half of the book becomes more interesting as Dash describes the witness' actual testimony before the committee, which still stands as the most exciting part of the affair. But despite its interest, most of the material is not new. What is new, and a bit touching, is the committee staff's feeling of impotence during the summer of 1974. By then. the House impeachment hearings had its turn on television and the House members...