Word: ervin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Thus a nervous but precise and wholly cooperative Butterfield became the Ervin committee's first mystery witness. He arrived without an attorney, not having had time even to obtain counsel to accompany him. Speaking in understated, undramatic terms, he told a sensational story of how Nixon had made it a practice to bug all presidential conversations. At no time, so far as he knew, Butterfield said, did Nixon seek to cut off the system or were his visitors or callers informed that their words were being taped...
...President precisely what he thinks about the implications that result when anyone withholds evidence. Ervin is respectful of, but not awed by, Presidents. Says he: "For a long time, I've proceeded on the basis that all people put on their trousers one leg at a time...
During one brief and bizarre episode, the ever-optimistic Ervin thought that his hopes had been realized beyond expectation. He announced at a session of the televised hearings that he had just received a telephone call from Treasury Secretary Shultz, whose Secret Service is custodian of the tapes Shultz, the chairman reported, had concealed that the President had decided to make all relevant tapes available to the committee and would meet with Ervin to arrange the transfer. The chairman praised the President for his "very wise decision." Vice Chairman Baker joined in the salutations, declaring: "It would appear that...
Within a half hour, his face now ruddier than usual, Erviri returned to his Senate Caucus Room microphone to announce that he had been the victim of a hoax. Ervin had just talked to a man "who really assured me he was the real Secretary Shultz, and he informed me that he had had no conversation with me today." Protested the embarrassed Ervin: "It is just an awful thing for a very trusting soul like me to find that there are human beings?if you can call them such?who would perpetrate a hoax like this...
...believed the first caller, Ervin said, since turning over the tapes was "what I've been praying the White House would do?because it is so rational." Far from amused, both the Ervin staff and the FBI, at White House direction, promptly announced investigations to find who had posed as Shultz...