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More than three years after his national spotlight faded, Samuel Dash, the chief counsel for the Watergate Committee, has come out with his version of the story called, appropriately, Chief Counsel. Although subtitled "Inside the Ervin Committee--The Untold Story of Watergate," Chief Counsel actually reveals precious little new information about the break-in, the cover-up, the associated dirty tricks, or anything substantive about the process of the Senate committee's investigation. What the book does provide is a large chunk of new Watergate trivia; gossip--and often nothing more--about individual senators on the committee and Dash...
Most personal narratives have their heroes and villains, and Chief Counsel is no exception. The hero, of course, is Dash himself, although Committee Chairman Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina takes nearly equal billing. The villain is principally Senator Howard Baker, the Republican from Tennessee, who served as vice chairman. Another villain, interestingly, is Archibald Cox '34, Williston Professor of Law, with whom Dash tangled during his short-lived role as the Watergate special prosecutor. It soon becomes clear that anyone who impeded the investigation that Dash envisioned comes under fire in Chief Counsel, and this predictability of Dash...
...opening chapters, Dash portrays himself as a reluctant warrior: a mild-mannered law professor who when asked by Ervin to act merely as a legal consultant to the committee is certainly honored to serve. The "who, me?" modesty that comes with Dash's added responsibility is quickly replaced by self-confidence as he tells his wife, Sara, an often-referred-to figure, "'I think I can. I know I can,' I said with a sense of exhilaration."' Later in the book, Dash tells of an article in Rolling Stone that was critical of his investigation and quoted an unnamed staff...
...that Dash has to say about Baker is bad, however. When the members of the committee, along with Dash and other counsel, gathered in Ervin's small, dark paneled Capitol office to await a phone call from the president, the atmosphere was tense. Ervin and Baker, says Dash, traded country-lawyer stories to entertain the others. When Talmadge jokingly asked if they should all stand up when the phone rang, Baker betrayed a slightly different character in his reply. "I suppose we should, and then all sing 'Bail to the Chief,'" Baker said...
...evening went on, the exchanges grew more and more acrimonious. "My opponent voted against Medicare-can you imagine?" asked Mondale. He also charged that Dole had tried to remove TV cameras from the Ervin committee hearings on Watergate. Dole, in turn, said that Mondale "wants to spend your money and tax and tax and spend and spend." Mondale, Dole wisecracked, was so completely under labor's thumb that AFL-CIO President George Meany was probably his makeup man. As for Carter, Dole said that the Democratic nominee had three positions on every issue, which...