THE CONGRESS: The Fateful Vote to Impeach

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committee's final public deliberation sometimes drifted into partisan bickering and time-consuming parliamentary gamesmanship, the result vindicated the patience and pace of the committee's determined chairman Peter Rodino. Through some seven months of laborious study, he kept the committee's overworked staff and its philosophically and temperamentally diverse members driving toward a resolution of its agonizing dilemma. When his committee faced its final act of judgment, the country was treated to a surprise: a group of nationally obscure and generally underrated Congressmen and Congresswomen rose to the occasion. Often with eloquence and poise, they faced the television cameras and demonstrated their mastery of complex detail, their dedication to duty, and their conscientious search for solutions that would best serve the public interest.

Rodino had long since been thoroughly convinced that impeachment was warranted by the committee's vast accumulation of evidence that was presented by Special Counsel John Doar and Minority Counsel Albert Tenner through eleven weeks of closed hearings and laid out in 36 notebooks of "statements of information." Rodino had one main aim as the days of decision approached: to secure maximum committee support for any articles of impeachment that would be recommended to the House. He knew that there was no hope of enlisting about ten Republicans firmly committed to Nixon's defense, but he hoped that articles could be drawn in a way that would attract the remaining Republicans, all troubled by some of Nixon's Watergate-related actions. Yet he also had the problem of not limiting the charges against the President so narrowly that the more liberal Democrats would insist on toughening the language or adding more articles. Rodino was worried too about some of the Southern Democrats, whose home districts tend to favor Nixon heavily.

Rodino and some House Democratic leaders then moved adroitly to seek the help of the Southern Democrats on the committee. These men, Flowers, Mann and Thornton, were offended by Nixon's encroachment on the Constitution and on such agencies as the FBI and IRS. They also are persuasive, soft-sell politicians with an ability to find common cause with the undecided Republicans. The key to gaining maximum support for articles, one House leader explained, was "to put together the Southern Democrats and the Republicans." The way to do that, this veteran told Rodino, was "to get Walter Flowers."

Well aware that his state of Alabama had long liked Nixon, Flowers seemed the most likely Democrat to vote against impeachment. He had developed an ulcer over the problem. Gently, Rodino urged Flowers to seek meetings with the moderate Republicans to see if they might find areas of agreement. The chairman asked the articulate and diplomatic Mann to do the same thing. By Tuesday, private meetings had begun among three Southerners and four uncommitted Republicans: Railsback, Cohen, Butler and Fish. This centrist group stood between the all-out impeachers and the Nixon loyalists.

Another Southern Democrat, Jack Brooks of Texas, also played a shrewd backstage role as the committee struggled for consensus. A persistent Nixon critic, Brooks prepared and distributed to all members of the committee a sweeping series of articles of impeachment that were poorly drawn