18, and investigating Nixon’s Watergate
I had been there for four days and I ended up subpoenaing HR Haldeman’s schedule
WASHINGTON: The sorry lot of the Capitol Hill junior staffer is to answer phones, pore over files, and make lunch runs. But for one glorious summer in 1973, interns and drudges helped change America – as the cogs turning the wheel that would ultimately result in Richard Nixon’s resignation.
“They were doing literally all of the grunt work,” remembers former Senator Lowell Weicker, the last surviving politician who served on the Senate’s Watergate committee.
With the 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in marked on Saturday, several of these former staffers talked about what it was like when your first grown-up job is bringing down the president of the US.
Cast: Lee Cory: Committee staff intern Allen Dale: Staff assistant to the deputy chief counsel Rufus Edmisten
Staff assistant for committee chairman Senator Sam Ervin
Gordon Freedman: Committee staff assistant Michael Hershman: Investigator Stephen Leopold: Committee staff assistant Jim Rowe: Staff research assistant Lowell Weicker: Committee member
Gordon Freedman: I was a student at Michigan State University when I became fascinated by Watergate.
As the hearings were starting, I literally left class one day in my earth shoes and rainbow hippie belt buckle and drove to Washington.
I stood in line every morning starting at 5.30am to get in to see the hearings.
Finally, after three days, a woman next to me in line said, “If you think this is so interesting, why don’t you try to get a job here?” And I said, “Here? With the committee?”
Lee Cory: I was working as an intern in Senator (Herman) Talmadge’s office. I’d been there not very long, when someone from the committee called over and said, “We need someone who can read and write”. Basically, they just needed someone who could breathe. I was 18.
Stephen Leopold: I had a little experience as a Nader Raider and had a little experience with Canadian politics – I’d just graduated from McGill – and when I contacted the committee, they said they would be interested in my qualifications. I was 21.
Freedman: I found a little brochure telling me who the committee members were, and I just started going door to door asking if anyone had a job: Senator Ervin first, then Senator Weicker. At Senator Talmadge’s office, a staffer overheard me talking to the administrative assistant and motioned me to come over. He said they had 10 000 backlogged letters from constituents and if I could organise them, then when I was done, they would put me on Watergate.
Leopold: It was like somebody who had always wanted to be a soldier suddenly dropped on the beaches of Normandy with no training.
Elisabeth DeMarse: I had no idea what I was doing.
Cory: The physical location of the committee was this old auditorium that had been made into cubicles.
DeMarse: It was in the basement. Room G-308 of what they then called the “New Senate Office Building” (now Dirksen). It had been a Senate caucus room.
The lawyers were up on the dais; the rest of us were down on the floor. There was a guard outside; you had to show an ID to get in. It was a very cobbled-together place. Eventually they did create a placard for outside: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.
And then there were just mountains and mountains and mountains of subpoenaed boxes. Coming in from all over the place. Our job was to log them, open them, and see what was inside.
Cory: On my first day, they had just discovered there were tapes from the Oval Office. I ended up reading a bunch of transcripts – the famous ones where Nixon’s secretary said she erased several minutes.
Michael Hershman: The first thing that happened when I got down there from New York – well, the first thing that happened was, I thought, “I have to find a building called “the US Senate”. The second thing was that my supervisor said, “You’re going to Florida to interview some Cubans who were involved in the break-in”.
DeMarse: They told me I was going to read all of these depositions related to milk money and campaign finance.
(The dairy industry had donated to Nixon’s campaign in exchange for government subsidies.) I thought ugh, no, I want to read about the burglars.
Leopold: I had been there for four days and I ended up subpoenaing HR Haldeman’s schedule. I’m 21. And I’m subpoenaing the agenda of the president’s chief of staff.
Freedman: We found out that inadvertently, the Nixon administration had parked all of its campaign files in the National Archives – you can imagine if suddenly all of Trump’s files were in the Archives. And somehow I was put in charge of taking a team of law students and interns to go over there, every day.
Lee Cory went on to become a corporate in-house attorney, and a conservation advocate.
Elisabeth DeMarse, after achieving an MBA, went on to become the chief executive of BankRate.com, CreditCards. com and TheStreet.com. Allen Dale founded his own law firm. Gordon Freedman served on two more congressional committees before becoming a film and TV. He now runs an education non-profit.
Michael Hershman founded Transparency International.
Stephen Leopold works in large-scale property development.
Jim Rowe is the co-managing partner of the Mintz Group.
After three terms in the US Senate, Lowell Weicker became the governor of Connecticut and retired in 1995