Page 5 - Sam Dash News Today

Documents he told them the stuff he was going to bring. they were asking about other stuff and he says, by the way, do you want the enemy list i brought with me? nobody had any idea it was coming. the room erupts. the senator questioning him has no idea what to say in response. its nervous laughter. sam dash comes in and says yes, we would like a copy of that, sir. its just a truly shocking moment. it was shocking not just because the president had a list of enemies but because the reason they h...

Question about it, she volunteers to offer a senate committee a document that the president ordered to make -- to compose, which is incredibly incriminating of the president. john dean was in the thick of all of this stuff. he was in the thick of all of this criminality just months before he became this highly cooperating witness right there on tv. >> yeah. i mean, this is -- i think like -- so its -- like imagine its don mcgahn sitting there in a committee hearing and he volunteers, you know, y...

Or he may provide a report to the acting attorney general and it may not become public. so its incumbent on the congress to exercise its response lkt as well and not just pass it over to the special counsel. thats one process but the other has to be a fully independent investigation and just like the 9/11 commission, all of those efforts can be brought under one house. and that would be deconflicting. there must be an independent commission. so the republicans work is not done. >> i think donna ...

Smart guys do. he is a pulitzer prize winning presidential historian and author. his terrific recent biography of president bush 41. it is good to have you here. >> used to be water gate took from june 17, 1972 until august 9, 1974. and cox had 14 months. and i remember you read the books, you read the sam dashs memoir and it was rapid but not like this. we havent gotten to the underlying infrastructure of the entire question of whether someone associated with the president of the united states ...

Guests so far tonight. we have one more. john meacham is here to put all of this into perspective as smart guysdo. he is a pulitzer prize winning presidential historian and author. his terrific recent biography of president bush 41. it is good to have you here. >> used to be water gate took from june 17, 1972 until august 9, 1974. and cox had 14 months. and i remember you read the books, you read the sam dashs memoir and it was rapid but not like this. we havent gotten to the underlying infrastr...

Books, you read sam dashs memoir. you read all those accounts, and it was rapid, but it wasnt like this. and we havent even gotten, interestingly, to the underlying -- the infrastructure of the entire question of whether someone associated with the president of the united states or perhaps the president of the united states committed treason by constitutional definition, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. so these have all been process points. its been, you know, the question of a cover-up, th...

And joining us, eugene robinson, opinion writer for "the washington post" and msnbc analyst and luke russert whos been on capitol hill, nbc news capitol hill correspondent. first of all, eugene, i want to offer you one of these losanges that hillary clinton needed to get through the day. >> would you have a shot of bourbon with me? >> i want to go to richard first. you have the experience that i find so relevant to what we were watching today. i said last night one of the reasons the watergate c...

On june 27 of 1973. and he was actually trying to pin me down for perjury at that point. i would take some issue with you on sam dash and fred thompson, while they did ask a lot of the questions and counsel was asking questions, the senators actually asked some of the tougher questions. dash and thompson just did kind of a clean up. i would also tell you, the witnesses are really in control in to a congressional hearing, unlike when i testified ten days in a courtroom, the witness doesnt control...

>> john dean, you have the experience of being in that hot seat in the committee room like this in a much more intensity serious situation with this, at that time, the entire presidency turned out to be at stake. what you watched today, if you -- if they had come to you and said how should we run this hearing, what would you have told them to do? >> well, the senate watergate committee really was a model and did become a model, served as a model for a lot of years. ironically, the question that ...

Toward her, towards her office, toward the casualties of benghazi that day. i harken back to committee hearings, you just alluded to them and i ended up thinking about halfway through the 11 hours that had this committee been employed to investigate the watergate break-in instead of sam irvin, a democrat, and howard baker, a republican, instead of sam dash, the democratic counsel and fred thompson, the republican counsel, who completed that hearing skillfully, legitimately, if this committee had...