House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry into Nixon

The House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry into Nixon was the congressional turn in the Watergate investigation: a process that had begun with a break-in and a trail of campaign money now placed possible action against the President before the House. The inquiry began as the Watergate grand jury sent Judge John Sirica a report and accompanying evidence concerning Richard Nixon, amid prosecutors’ argument that an incumbent President could not be indicted.

From campaign funds to evidence about the President

The inquiry followed a chain of disclosures that connected the Watergate operation to senior campaign officials. Among the financial records was a $25,000 cashier’s check payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg. Deposited with four checks routed through Mexico, it formed part of a $114,000 deposit; four days later, Bernard Barker withdrew $25,000, and the remaining $89,000 was withdrawn separately. The check supplied a specific link between campaign funds and the people associated with the Watergate operation, though the document alone did not establish who had authorized the expenditures.

A Washington Post report described a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President containing more than $300,000 for sensitive political projects. It reported that G. Gordon Liddy had received money from the fund, that records relating to it had been destroyed, and that Hugh Sloan had resigned as treasurer after becoming suspicious of Watergate. The reporting mattered not only for the amounts and names it disclosed but because it showed that the indictments of the burglars had not resolved the larger questions about the operation or the people who financed it.

Sloan later supplied a more direct account of how some campaign expenditures had been authorized. He said that when he was first approached for money, he called John Mitchell at the Justice Department; Mitchell told him to release it. Sloan described the calls as a routine practice that began in 1971, and said Mitchell initially was the sole person authorized to approve expenditures before authority passed to others, including Jeb Magruder. This account connected the campaign’s financial process to Mitchell, who had served as Attorney General, while leaving the precise scope and purpose of each expenditure to be established through further evidence.

Silence, pressure, and a growing record

The reporting also encountered a campaign organization in which employees were afraid to speak. During evening visits to Committee for the Re-election of the President staff, one employee trembled and pleaded with Carl Bernstein to leave before others saw him; another said she wanted to help and then broke into tears. Their reactions conveyed the pressure surrounding potential witnesses, but did not themselves establish what any particular employee knew.

A committee bookkeeper told Bernstein that people had already lied to the grand jury before investigators knew what questions to ask. She said that Sally Harmony and others had lied, while cautioning that she and Harmony had not discussed the matter. Separately, prosecutors were suspicious of Harmony’s testimony but lacked evidence to charge her with perjury. The discrepancy between rumors of false testimony and what could be proved illustrated why the inquiry depended on corroboration rather than suspicion alone.

Sloan described the pressure on former campaign employees in similarly guarded terms. He said they had not been expressly ordered to remain silent, but the message had been to hold ranks and keep the organization together; he acknowledged that an instruction to lie was a reasonable inference, without claiming it had been stated outright. He also said his lawyers had advised against public comment because statements could be used in civil litigation. His reluctance therefore reflected both organizational pressure and personal legal risk, even as he gave reporters information about Mitchell’s role in authorizing funds.

Other disclosures widened the questions facing investigators. Jeb Magruder told federal prosecutors that Mitchell and White House Counsel John Dean had approved and helped plan the Watergate bugging operation, and that the two later arranged to buy the silence of the convicted conspirators. The account was attributed to Magruder through three sources in the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Separately, Deep Throat told Bob Woodward that John Ehrlichman and Dean had conveyed to L. Patrick Gray that files concerning E. Howard Hunt were political dynamite and should not be seen; Gray later said he put them in a burn bag. These were consequential allegations reported through sources, not findings made by the House inquiry itself.

The grand jury’s referral and the constitutional question

On March 1, the Watergate grand jury indicted seven former White House and campaign aides for conspiracy to obstruct justice, including H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, John Mitchell, Gordon Strachan, Robert Mardian, and lawyer Kenneth Parkinson. The grand jury also gave Judge Sirica a briefcase containing a report and supporting evidence concerning the President. Prosecutors had argued that the Constitution precluded indicting an incumbent President; the grand jurors therefore recommended that the report and evidence be turned over to the House committee.

Acting for the House, whose constitutional authority includes the sole power to impeach, the House Judiciary Committee began the first investigation in more than one hundred years into possible action against a President. The referral moved the question of presidential accountability into a congressional process rather than resolving it through a criminal indictment of a sitting President. It also distinguished the committee’s work from the grand jury’s criminal cases: the aides faced indictments, while the evidence concerning Nixon went to the House for consideration of possible impeachment.

The inquiry thus emerged from an accumulating record, not a single document or allegation. Financial traces, accounts of authorization, testimony about the planning and concealment of the operation, and evidence concerning the handling of files each carried different weight and required evaluation. The grand jury’s referral marked a decisive change in forum: what prosecutors said could not proceed as an indictment of an incumbent President was placed before the body constitutionally empowered to consider impeachment.