Senator HATCH. It is all right for your side to take all you want. We cannot take ours?

Senator METZENBAUM. Just a moment. Just let me be heard.

When Senator Thurmond had the floor, you took 5 or 10 minutes of his time, and nobody objected to it. Then you have had 5 minutes, and another 5.

Senator KENNEDY. Senator, we-

Senator HATCH. There were 30 minutes taken by two of your side this morning. Now all I am going to do is finish with this quoteSenator KENNEDY. Senator Thurmond was enormously accommodating to work out back-to-back panels.

Senator HATCH. Yes. He was.

Senator KENNEDY. And he did that in order to accommodate Senator Metzenbaum and myself. We would like to try and be accommodating, but I thought that since the Senator had two rounds, that we would enforce the time limit strictly for the remaining witnesses, and then Senator Biden has come back▬▬

Senator HATCH. That will be fine.

Senator KENNEDY [continuing]. And we will let him make the decisions as to what we will do after that. Joe, we are glad to have you back.

Senator HATCH. That will be fine, but I would like it to work both ways, not just all the time on that side, and none

Senator KENNEDY. Now Senator, it has.

Senator HATCH. No, it has not.

Senator KENNEDY. You have had two rounds. We will let Senator Biden

Senator HATCH. Well, it has not worked that way.

Senator KENNEDY. I would recognize the Senator from Vermont. Senator LEAHY. I do not mind so much the Senator from Utah going overtime. I would just like to allow the witnesses to answer his question, after he had asked it, before I begin my round. Mr. Chairman, I did not know whether they had had an opportunity to answer the question.

Senator HATCH. Well, first of all, I had not had the opportunity to finish the quote from Philip Lacovara, and as soon as I had finished, I was going to ask them if they agreed with the quote. I was not even permitted to do that.

Now, look, this is important stuff.

Senator LEAHY. I thought after 10 minutes one could get the question out, but——

Senator HATCH. Well, let's be fair about it. Let's let both sides have some time.

Senator LEAHY. All right.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you guys all right? Are you all doing okay? Good. I am all right. You are all right. I am sure glad I came back. Mr. RUTH. I would be happy to ask the question and then answer it, Senator, if you want.

The question seems to be, do I agree with Phil Lacovara, that Robert Bork asked the staff to stay together and continue our work. Yes. The answer to that is "yes."

The question is why, and what would the power be when it came time to subpoena the next tape from the President and the Presi

dent said no. We did not know what Mr. Bork would do when the President said no. That was the issue, sir.

Staying together-everybody wanted us to stay together for their different motives. The White House wanted us to stay together to offset the independent Special Prosecutor bills introduced in the Congress, which Mr. Bork thought were unconstitutional.

Senator HATCH. Can I just make one comment on that, because that is what Lacovara said. He said yes, he would keep you togeth

er.

But Lacovara said: "I specifically recall the assurances that he and Assistant Attorney General Petersen gave, that the investigations would proceed on an objective, thorough, and professional basis, and would seek whatever evidence was relevant in determining guilt or innocence of the persons under investigation.'

Do you recall that? I mean, is that fair?

Mr. RUTH. Yes, sir. Phil Lacovara is a close friend of mine, he is one of the best lawyers

Senator HATCH. He is a great guy.

Mr. RUTH [continuing]. I have ever dealt with. However, he and I differ on this point.

Senator HATCH. Okay.

Mr. RUTH. Mr. Bork had never been in law enforcement. He had no idea of the status of the investigations. Any assurance by him, again, was irrelevant. That is a fact, Senator. It is not sinister. The CHAIRMAN. Hit that timer and

Senator LEAHY. My time now?

The CHAIRMAN. Senator-your time is up?

Senator LEAHY. No. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. It is okay by me, if you view it that way.
Senator LEAHY. No, I do not.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead. The Senator from Vermont.

Senator LEAHY. I thought we were still on Senator Hatch's third round.

Let me ask this. You said Judge Bork was not someone with a law enforcement background. I find your testimony very interest

ing spent a third of my adult life in law enforcement as the chief

law enforcement officer of my home area, and one thing that strikes me in all of this is the question of, as this change went on, of somebody coming forward and saying, hey, fellows, what have you got there? You know, what's the evidence? Should we be securing any evidence? Should we be holding on to something? Are there subpoenas that should be going out? Should we be grabbing hold of any material? And I have not heard anything about that. Let me ask you this, Mr. Ruth. Did Judge Bork say to you what is the evidence you have here, what kind of a case do you have, what should we be holding together?

Mr. RUTH. No, sir. You mean before the firing? There was no inquiry before the firing. We started to brief Mr. Petersen in the week following the firing.

Indeed, we were so apprehensive about what was going to happen, that a number of us had rented safe-deposit boxes, and in fact, Senator Hatch, Phil Lacovara and I had a joint safe-deposit

box at Riggs Bank in which we put grand-jury material, just to safeguard it.

And the following week, we went to court with the name of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and only Henry Petersen to seek a protective order, that no one but members of our staff, and Henry Petersen, could take material out of our office.

That did not include Mr. Bork, and that indicates how we felt about Mr. Bork at the time, not knowing his position on the extent and breadth of executive power and executive privilege.

Senator LEAHY. Did you find it unusual that there was no inquiry made about what kind of evidence you had, or what you were doing to protect the evidence?

Mr. RUTH. Before the firing, as a prosecutor, I was astounded, particularly in light of the fact that John Dean had just pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice in conversations with the President, to which he had testified in public in July for 4 days. So everybody knew the nature of that evidence, Senator, which was being suppressed by the firing.

Senator LEAHY. Mr. Frampton, did you want to add anything to that?

Mr. FRAMPTON. Only this, Senator. That I recall during the 2 weeks after the firing of Mr. Cox, that our offices, which had originally been seized by FBI agents, presumably acting under the instructions of Judge Bork, and were replaced by U.S. marshals, inspected the material that we took out of the office to take to the grand jury.

And so we adopted a practice of not taking anything that we would not want the White House to see, because we assumed that the marshals reported to the Justice Department, and there was a risk that anything they inspected, they might report back to the White House and to people who were under investigation.

Senator LEAHY. Were you given, at the time, any instructions of what you were supposed to do, other than just remain on the job? Mr. FRAMPTON. Not that I can recall. Our objective was simply to try to get by, day by day, enough days, that either the President would be forced, as he was eventually, to appoint a new Special Prosecutor, or the Congress would come to our rescue with Special Prosecutor legislation, and we would have someone, even if it were not our group, to turn the evidence over to.

Mr. RUTH. There was a third option, Senator, which we were prepared to do, and that was to go to Judge Sirica, since we were officers of the grand jury, and become the attorneys for the grand jury.

This investigation was not going to stop.

Senator LEAHY. All of these, these three options that you talk about, in my mind as a former prosecutor, I find remarkable, because they sort of have you going off, trying to gerrymander something, without having the person-who should be the central person giving direction-doing so.

Or am I missing something?

Mr. RUTH. Sir, the context-if we remind ourselves-a Mideast war had just begun in the beginning of October, and during that weekend, and before, Charles Allen Wright, the President's counsel had told Archie Cox, "We'll do what is best for the interests of the

country," and General Haig had told Bill Ruckelshaus your commander-in-chief has ordered you.

There was a whole national security overtone, that it was necessary to the nation to get rid of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force.

We were, quite frankly, frightened what was going to happen, and then when the FBI occupied our offices, it is very vivid and hard to describe.

Senator LEAHY. And the FBI was under the final chain of command to the new Acting Attorney General?

Mr. RUTH. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out, the FBI kept saying.

Senator LEAHY. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. When I last was here I am not sure who was next.

Senator Simpson.

Senator SIMPSON. Thank you, Senator. We are talking about two rounds, three rounds. I haven't heard that since I was in the Blue Ribbon Bar in Meeteetse. [Laughter.]

Strange things done in the midnight sun. Robert Service's marvelous story about the cremation of Sam McGee. And you know, really, it is strange. Because here we are talking about a situation that happened in this United States 14 years ago, and this man has been before us twice, once as a Democratically controlled Senate, once as a Republican controlled Senate, and my question is where were you then?

Mr. RUTH. When, Senator?

Senator SIMPSON. When we confirmed this man as Solicitor General of the United States of America before a Democratically controlled Senate and when we confirmed him to the U.S. district court of appeals, and he had a hearing before this body, and one of the issues was Watergate, and where were you then?

Mr. FRAMPTON. Senator, I can answer that question for myself. Senator SIMPSON. Yes. It would be helpful.

Mr. FRAMPTON. I was not asked to testify at Judge Bork's confirmation hearings in 1982, and I didn't volunteer. I didn't volunteer to testify here today, either. I was asked to testify, and I must say that until 5 or 6 weeks ago I had never seen or read Judge Bork's testimony given in the 1982 hearings. And when I read that testimony, I concluded based upon the facts known to me personally, which are very vivid in my mind, that that testimony is substantially inaccurate.

Senator SIMPSON. Who asked you to testify?

Mr. FRAMPTON. I was notified on Monday morning that the committee had put me on a witness list. That is a week ago, when I got back from Montana.

Senator SIMPSON. Who called you?

Mr. FRAMPTON. I don't know, Senator. The scheduling person for the committee majority, I assume, called me and left a message that I was to testify Thursday with Mr. Ruth.

Senator SIMPSON. Were you called, too, Mr. Ruth?

Mr. RUTH. No, sir, not in 1982. All in all, I would rather be in Philadelphia, and that is where I was in 1982 and I am not sure I was even aware of Judge Bork's hearings.

Senator SIMPSON. Well, you are aware of Watergate because you both-

Mr. RUTH. Up in Philadelphia, we have to work for a living, Senator. We can't keep coming down here.

Senator SIMPSON. I know. But you both have talked about it, you have written about it, and you have said a lot about it. It meant a great deal to you in your lives.

Mr. RUTH. I have written nothing about it and not talked about it. I never wrote a book about Watergate. We put out a report at the end of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, which contains most of the facts that I testified to today.

Senator SIMPSON. Well, that is pretty vital stuff anyway in your lives or you wouldn't be here and speaking about it with the intensity that I think I hear displayed.

Mr. RUTH. It was an intense time, Senator.

Senator SIMPSON. But, anyway, Mr. Frampton wrote about it in a book called Stonewall, and in chapter 8, called "Archie's Orphans Meets the Silver Fox, Jaworski Arrives:"

"To say that we had very little confidence in our new boss, Leon Jaworski, on the day he was sworn in would be putting it mildly. To us Jaworski represented no less than the man President Nixon had procured to perpetrate the biggest fix of all time."

Well, I guess you were wrong on Jaworski, apparently. What is your view on that? I think you were wrong on Jaworski. This is what you said about him.

Mr. FRAMPTON. That was the point of view of most of the people in the office, including myself, on the day Jaworski arrived. That is correct, Senator. He certainly earned our respect and our admiration for his integrity and his aggressiveness.

Mr. RUTH. That was not my view at the time, Senator. I had had the opportunity to work with Mr. Jaworski on President Johnson's Crime Commission.

Senator SIMPSON. Yes, I see.

Mr. RUTH. Mr. Jaworski was tough as nails. He wasn't going to accept the job unless he knew he had independence, and when he accepted it I knew we were home free.

Senator SIMPSON. But at that time, it seems to me, if you can refer to Jaworski as a "fixture," there is no limit to what you can refer to Bork as during those times. That is what I am saying.

And Bork did testify, Elliot Richardson did testify, I don't believe you were present at the meeting of Judge Bork, either one of you, or the leaders of the team. I don't remember that you were there. No one has ever testified in these proceedings that either one of you were involved in the decision on October 20 about whether to carry out the President's order to dismiss Mr. Cox, so you are not in any possible position, either one of you, as lawyers or laymen or just witnesses, to second guess the judgment made by Judge Bork and Elliot Richardson that it was the proper course of conduct for Judge Bork to carry out that order.

How can either one of you be any kind of credible witness when you weren't there and you didn't participate in it one whit?

Mr. RUTH. Because Mr. Bork has testified that he made the decision in 5 minutes without asking about the state of the evidence at a time when we were requesting tapes with evidence of Presiden