This book bears witness to the fact that a lot of very busy people took a lot of time to talk to me about what was going through their minds during the upheaval that was Watergate. I cannot list them all. Some, of course, are no longer alive. I think of the quiet, shy, usually barely articulate Peter Rodino, who was transformed into the wise, dignified, eloquent leader of the House Judiciary Committee in its Inquiry Into the Impeachment of Richard Nixon. Rodino was among the number of apparently unremarkable people who rose to the occasion and acted remarkably. They were deadly serious as they went about their job of deciding whether Nixon was to be impeached and on what grounds. Or even what impeachment was or what it should be: what were the grounds for voting to in effect indict a president, or in the Senate to convict him. They understood the gravamen of the situation, sifted the evidence, considered what the country could bear in this first, and only, serious impeachment process in our history. And they made no bones about that this was also a highly political decision, as well as a momentous, historical one. I can tell it here that the figure I referred to as “the man in the traffic patterns” on Capitol Hill, who had an unerring sense of where things were moving, was Charlie Ferris, a Boston pol type, who was Staff Director of the Democratic Policy Committee and a close adviser to Majority Leader Mike Mansfield.
Two people above all made this book possible, and were major influences on how I went about it. William Shawn, then the editor of the New Yorker, was as remarkable as legend has it. Other writers would agree that his quiet encouragement, severe but gently applied high standards, and love for writers, lifted us all and made us better at what we did. When at last he had to retire, the New York Times editorialized: “For several generations of [writers], being asked to write for William Shawn was like being asked to dance with Fred Astaire.” Exactly.
The other major influence, John Gardner, was a mentor throughout this project and for much of my life: pillar, adviser, inspirer, friend. I was honored by the support of these two exceptional men.
I first met Francis O’Brien, Rodino’s Administrative Assistant in early January of 1974, when the time had come to familiarize myself with the House Judiciary Committee and understand how it would set about its extraordinary task. We became lasting friends and he’s no less wise, interesting, and funny now than he was then. If Francis didn’t invent loyalty he put his own unrivalled stamp on it. Others, then and now, gave me the moral and other support to see this project through. Among them are Molly Ball, Dan and Nancy Balz, Stephen Breyer, Barbara Cochran, David Cohen, Ezra Klein and Annie Lowrey, Molly Raiser, Deborah Tannen, and Catherine Wyler. And of course my dear Daniel and Alexander Webster—as well as the Villegas family, in particular the incomparable Tessie, without whom I cannot imagine getting much of anything done for more than a decade.
This book is also dedicated to the beloved Haynes Johnson.