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The 1973 Watergate Hearings
I recently read Pat Buchanan’s book, White House Wars, which describes his time working for Richard Nixon, including some years before he became president and running through Nixon’s resignation. It was based on a recommendation from Scott Johnson on a Power Line post. I had already been aware of the book and had listened to some interviews of Buchanan when it first came out in 2017.
Scott Johnson said he bought it just for the chapter where Buchanan describes his appearance before the Senate Watergate Committee. And that’s what attracted me. The Watergate hearings were televised by all the television networks during the daytime in the summer of 1973. I was between my freshman and sophomore year in high school that summer and already a political junkie. It was my first opportunity to watch the Senate on television.
I do remember watching the John Dean’s “cancer on the presidency” testimony live. I did not watch Buchanan’s testimony, because he testified in late September, and I was back in school by then.
Buchanan’s testimony was a clinic on how to deal with hostile questioners, and I recommend going back and watching his testimony, which is online. In fact, you can find all the gavel-to-gavel Watergate hearings online.
I have a few observations after watching some of those hearings again.
In the time of C-SPAN, we have the opportunity to see lots of Senate committee hearings. Usually, the seating of the senators is on an elevated platform, above any witness testifying before them. That was not the case for the Watergate hearings. The senators sat at the same level as the witness and other staff.
Not unusual for the times, there was a lot of smoking. Occasionally you would see wafts of smoke going by the screen. But I also notice that they avoided showing senators and the staff behind them actually smoking cigarettes. Instead, anyone showed smoking was shown smoking a pipe. I did see Howard Baker lighting a cigarette, but the screen quickly went to another shot. A pipe smoker was considered urbane. And pipes were somewhat popular before smoking as a whole started getting banned. I think that pipe smoking is almost unheard of now.
Of the senators, the biggest star was the chairman, Sam Ervin, who at 74 was also the oldest member. I don’t think any of the other senators was older than 60. Ervin became a minor celebrity, calling himself “an old country lawyer” (he was a Harvard graduate), and you can find him on YouTube along with many of his folksy witticisms. He was also noted for the movement of his eyebrows, and some comedians of the day made light-hearted fun of them. Ervin did not run for re-election and ended his 20 years of Senate service in late 1974.
Howard Baker was the leading Republican on the committee and was already being talked about as a candidate for president. While he wasn’t successful, he did go on to become the Republican Minority Leader in the Senate, and then Reagan’s chief of staff after the Iran-Contra affair forced the resignations of much of Reagan’s staff.
Other notable senators that went on to enhance their political careers as a result of the televised hearings included Lowell Weicker. Herman Talmadge of Georgia chose to go back into obscurity, and he was known as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Senate.
I was living in New Mexico at the time of the hearings and took special interest in Joseph Montoya. Montoya basically disgraced himself during the hearings asking questions that seemed to be, shall we say, irrelevant. They made him look pretty bad. When I look at his Wikipedia entry, which presumably is maintained by either his family or other interests friendly to him, his time on the Watergate committee is not mentioned. Given this was his only national exposure, that’s significant. He lost re-election in 1976, and I suspect that his Watergate performance was a factor, along with an IRS investigation at the time that seemed to be bogus. He was defeated by former astronaut and last man on the moon, Harrison Schmitt, who I met when he was campaigning for the Senate seat.
There was one other name on the committee of note, and that was Fred Thompson, who at the time was minority counsel, appointed by Howard Baker. He, of course, went on to become an actor, which he fell into by accident, and then senator. He later made an unsuccessful run for president.
Another couple of people that boosted their careers through the Watergate hearings was Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer. They covered the hearings for PBS, and it was after that when the Robert MacNeil Report started, and which Jim Lehrer was involved in, and then later the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.
As an aside, I did not have access to PBS at the time (the archives I watched were televised by PBS). It was about a year later, in 1974, that a local PBS station was established in the rural area of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. My live viewing of the hearings was all via the major networks, which interrupted regularly scheduled programs (soap operas) to televise them. Most of the adult viewing was by stay-at-home moms. They were more common in 1973.
Published in General
I remember thinking that Senator Ervin was like a computer whose peripherals were starting to fail and like his eyebrows, operate independently, but the main processing unit was at full strength.
Old Man Skinner always referred to him as “Righteous Sam,” in an ironic, dismissive sort of way.
Sam Ervin’s eyebrows, were he still with us and on the national scene, would have their own Twitter account by now.
The example of how to testify was Oliver North.
He forced a subpoena, and then he forced immunity before he testified.
Usually, a witness is questioned by staff in private the day before, so that the Senators will know what to ask. But North forced them to question him cold.
To top it off, he looked resplendent in his uniform.
After 5 minutes of testimony one hostile staffer or reporter was heard to exclaim: “I want to have his baby!”
I was at NMMI in 1976 and met Harrison Schmitt at a campaign event in Roswell. My Father was there to cover the event for the AP, and was appalled when I told Schmitt I was going to vote for him. My Father wasn’t upset because he was a Democrat (he usually voted for the Democrat, but had a low opinion of Montoya), but because my statement might be viewed as a reflection of bias on his part. He was a bit different than most journalists nowadays.
I was at ENMU when I met Schmitt. He working the cafeteria.
This brings back memories. I was a six-year-old, soon-to-be political junkie. We had just moved to Phoenix in August of 1973, I didn’t know anyone in my just-built neighborhood, so I sat on the floor in front of the big Zenith console to watch the hearings (there was nothing else on).
Also, your mention of Harrison Schmitt reminded me of this:
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Here’s Jack (Harrison) Schmitt with Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan and my friend Bill Mellberg in 2012. Jack’s a staunch conservative. I talked with him for a few minutes at the Apollo 17 40th anniversary celebration at the Adler.
I like to say Fred Thompson’s ‘run’ was more like a Presidential mosey.
So far no mention of the real star of the hearings: Mo Dean.
Harrison Schmidt is the featured character in the Apollo 17 episode of Tom Hanks’ HBO production of From the Earth to the Moon. The central focus of that episode is teaching astronauts, generally hot shot test pilot Corvette driving engineers, the importance of observing and reporting on lunar geology.
The whole series is quite good. My favorite episode is the story of Apollo 12, which includes Pete Conrad’s famous phrase, “That may be a small step for Neil Armstrong…”
I was also a sophomore in high school and watched the hearings daily. The Senate hearings were the high theater to the later more mundane House hearings lead by Peter Rodino from NJ. He was the less colorful but quiet and steady lead of those hearings.
Unlike today’s hearings and the over the top histrionics (eg Kavanaugh hearings), the Congressmen of that time seemed to appreciate the gravity of the subject at hand.
I wonder if the medium that created these memories, TV, is the root cause of why we’ve “gone off the rails”.
PS I remember Dean’s cancer testimony at the time as seeing it as heroic. At some time later I came to understand it differently (i.e self serving.)
PPS As for Ollie North’s testimony I found it a bit too dramatic and self serving. Maybe it’s me and my personality but I felt John Poindexter’s testimony was better. He fell on his sword for his boss and in a matter of fact, “you can’t hurt me” way. And unlike Ollie, Poindexter didn’t go on to be the AM radio/ cable TV pundit.