INTRODUCTORY NOTE This is a chronological compilation of Presidential statements on the Watergate break-in excerpted from Volumes 8, 9 and 10 of The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. Statements which were made as part of Presidential News Conferences or other question and answer sessions are reproduced in their entirety, along with the questions responded to. The remaining questions and answers are not included. Letters, Statements and Addresses to the Nation are in cluded in their entirety, with the single exception of the President's State of the Union Address of January 30, 1974. Only the last portion of that address, the part dealing with Watergate, has been included. At the end of each document is a citation showing the volume and page numbers of The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from which the document was reproduced. The impeachment inquiry staff library has available for reference a complete set of The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from 1969 to the present. (1) NEWS CONFERENCE OF JUNE 22, 1972 **** Q. Mr. O'Brien has said that the people who bugged his headquarters had a direct link to the White House. Have you had any sort of investigation made to determine whether this is true? THE PRESIDENT. Mr. Ziegler and also Mr. Mitchell, speaking for the campaign committee, have responded to questions on this in great detail. They have stated my position and have also stated the facts accurately. This kind of activity, as Mr. Ziegler has indicated, has no place whatever in our electoral process, or in our governmental process. And, as Mr. Ziegler has stated, the White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident. As far as the matter now is concerned, it is under investigation, as it should be, by the proper legal authorities, by the District of Columbia police, and by the FBI. I will not comment on those matters, particularly since possible criminal charges are involved. THE PRESIDENT'S NEWS CONFERENCE OF AUGUST 29, 1972 THE PRESIDENT. We will go right ahead with your questions, because I know you want to cover perhaps some international as well as domestic matters, including, I understand, for the first time, political matters. Q. Mr. President, are you personally investigating the mishandling of some of your campaign funds, and do you agree with former Secretary Connally that these charges are harmful to your reelection? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I commented upon this on other occasions, and I will repeat my position now. With regard to the matter of the handling of campaign funds, we have a new law here in which technical violations have occurred and are occurring, apparently, on both sides. As far as we are concerned, we have in charge, in Secretary Stans, a man who is an honest man and one who is very meticulous, as I have learned from having him as my treasurer and finance chairman in two previous campaigns, in the handling of matters of this sort. Whatever technical violations have occurred, certainly he will correct them and will thoroughly comply with the law. He is conducting any investigation on this matter, and conducting it very, very thoroughly, because he doesn't want any evidence at all to be outstanding, indicating that we have not complied with the law. Q. Mr. President, wouldn't it be a good idea for a special prosecutor, even from your standpoint, to be appointed to investigate the contribution situation and also the Watergate case? THE PRESIDENT. With regard to who is investigating it now, I think it would be well to notice that the FBI is conducting a full field investigation. The Department of Justice, of course, is in charge of the prosecution and presenting the matter to the grand jury. The Senate Banking and Currency Committee is conducting an investigation. The Government Accounting Office, an independent agency, is conducting an investigation of those aspects which involve the campaign spending law. Now, with all of these investigations that are being conducted, I don't believe that adding another special prosecutor would useful purpose. serve any The other point that I should make is that these investigations, the investigation by the GAO, the investigation by the FBI, by the Department of Justice, have, at my direction had the total cooperation of the-not only the White House-but also of all agencies of the Government. In addition to that, within our own staff, under my direction, Counsel to the President, Mr. Dean, has conducted a complete investigation of all leads which might involve any present members of the White House Staff or anybody in the Government. I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one in the White House Staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident. At the same time, the committee itself is conducting its own investigation, independent of the rest, because the committee desires to clear the air and to be sure that as far as any people who have responsibility for this campaign are concerned, that there is nothing that hangs over them. Before Mr. Mitchell left as campaign chairman he had employed a very good law firm with investigatory experience to look into the matter. Mr. MacGregor has continued that investigation and is continuing it now. I will say in that respect that anyone on the campaign committee, Mr. MacGregor has assured me, who does not cooperate with the investigation or anyone against whom charges are leveled where there is a prima facie case that those charges might indicate involvement will be dis charged immediately. That, of course, will be true also of anybody in the Government. I think under these circumstances we are doing everything we can to take this incident and to investigate it and not to cover it up. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up. I would say that here we are, with control of the agencies of the Government and presumably with control of the investigatory agencies of the Government with the exception of the GAO, which is independent. We have cooperated completely. We have indicated that we want all the facts brought out and that as far as any people who are guilty are concerned, they should be prosecuted. This kind of activity, as I have often indicated, has no place whatever in our political process. We want the air cleared. We want it cleared as soon as possible. ** 8 Presidential Documents, 1306-07 NEWS CONFERENCE OF OCTOBER 5, 1972 ******** Q. Mr. President, don't you think that your Adminis tration and the public would be served considerably and that the men under indictment would be treated better, if you people would come through and make a clean breast about what you were trying to get done at the Watergate? THE PRESIDENT. One thing that has always puzzled me about it is why anybody would have tried to get anything out of the Watergate. But be that as it may, that decision having been made at lower levels, with which I had no knowledge, and, as I pointed out Q. Surely you know now, sir. THE PRESIDENT. Just a minute. I certainly feel that under the circumstances that we have got to look at what has happened and to put the matter into perspective. Now when we talk about a clean breast, let's look at what has happened. The FBI assigned 133 agents to this investigation. It followed out 1,800 leads. It conducted 1,500 interviews. Incidentally, I conducted the investigation of the Hiss case. I know that is a very unpopular subject to raise in some quarters, but I conducted it. It was successful. The FBI did a magnificient job, but that investigation, involving the security of this country, was basically a Sunday school exercise compared to the amount of effort that was put into this. I agreed with the amount of effort that was put into it. I wanted every lead carried out to the end because I wanted to be sure that no member of the White House staff and no man or woman in a position of major responsibility in the Committee for Re-election had anything to do with this kind of reprehensible activity. Now, the grand jury has handed down indictments. It has indicted incidentally two who were with the Committee for the Re-election and one who refused to cooperate and another who was apprehended. Under these circumstances, the grand jury now having acted, it is now time to have the judicial process go forward and for the evidence to be presented. I would say finally with regard to commenting on any of those who have been indicted, with regard to saying anything about the judicial process, I am going to follow the good advice, which I appreciate, of the members of the press corps, my constant, and I trust will always continue to be, very responsible critics. I stepped into one on that when you recall I made inadvertently a comment in Denver about an individual who had been indicted in California, the Manson case. I was vigorously criticized for making any comment about the case, and so of course, I know you would want me to follow the same single standard by not commenting on this |