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Q: Was there any concern as the Watergate ... MILLER: Cooper told AIPAC his view and they respected his candid talk. AIPAC also knew Cooper was not vulnerable in Kentucky on the Arab-Israeli issue. As it happened, my neighbor in Hollin Hills was the director of AIPAC, Sy Kenan. He would bring up Cooper’s independence with me very carefully as we pruned our azaleas and hollies. I worked very closely with several AIPAC directors. They were all good friends: Tom Dine, Morie Amitay, Ken Wallock. Peter Lakeland, Javits’ foreign policy key aide, was and is a close lifelong friend. Given my views on the Middle East, it helped to have them as friends. We would discuss – he would say, "Senator Cooper is not onboard, so to speak." And I would say, "You know why. You know his position and how he came to it." And they would say, "Yes. We'd like him on the list." Q: Well, was there any concern that as the Watergate crisis heated up, that Nixon might try some dramatic foreign affairs venture to get the country behind him? MILLER: The senators knew Nixon very well. He had been a senator and a colleague for some time. They'd lived with him for much of their lives, but they were ready to deal with him. They were ready. They thought they knew his scope. I don't think people were ever very proud of him, but they treated him with great caution and watched very carefully. It was extraordinary, how tense the situation was. I remember when Nixon came to the Senate floor and senators and staff were invited to meet him, there were a number who refused to meet him and shake his hand. Q: Well, at the resignation of Nixon, what happened? The Ford pardon and all of that, how was that? MILLER: There was a split on whether a full catharsis had been reached. A correct appropriate political conclusion – many felt the Ford pardon was a mistake, but I think in general they felt that Ford had poured oil on troubled waters and at great personal political cost. They understood that the pardon would cost him the election, because there was a great bitterness among many of the country, particularly those who had been targets. But most senators liked Gerald Ford, and liked some of his people who had been House functionaries for quite a while. I had extensive meetings with Jack Marsh, he had been Secretary of the Army, under Ford. He was an able decent man. Ford had a very good staff for legislative purposes. Ford was the right person at that very divisive point. The Ford presidency was seen as an excellent transition back to normal politics. Q: Well, now, from your career, what happened after Ford is in, and how long did you stay with the Senate? MILLER: The Ford period was very important busy time for me, because at that point 90
Cooper retires and I go as Chief of Staff of the Senate Select Committee. This is the period of an important effort to get rid of Emergency Powers and War Powers. 2,300 statutes had been passed since 1790, that gave the president extraordinary powers in time of war or so-called national emergency. Among the emergency powers which the President could exercise without legislative approval was the power to freeze currency, seize all communications, declare military zones, and put people in concentration camps. Q: Well, would you explain? This was an act that set up a temporary committee? MILLER: This was an ad hoc committee that was set up by the House and the Senate, a joint select committee. Select committees have an equal number from each party and ours had co-chairman. The Select Committee has a limited life, as a committee; it has a requirement to complete work within that specified period. At first there were two separate committees: one in the House, one in the Senate. The House Committee was disbanded after some internal difficulties while the Senate Select Committee continued its work. For three years, we worked closely with the executive branch and the Supreme Court on the legal status of declarations of war, declarations of emergency and the powers that were delegated from the legislature to the president as a result of declarations. It was a huge research project, that I directed. Frank Church and Charles Mac Mathias were the co-chairman. Our staff had 20 lawyers, mostly seniors in several law schools who took time off from their law studies to work for a semester at the Committee. We all spent most of our time in the Library of Congress. The first task was a so-called “hand search” of all statutes, that is, going through all laws passed by the Congress from number one to the present time. This search of all statutes in the Statutes at Large was necessary because there had never been a catalog made by the government of emergency powers or the special powers of the president, much less executive orders. So, after a year, we had gained a thorough understanding of the task. Our research revealed that there were over 2,300 statutes that delegated from the congress to the president emergency powers. They included 120 secret statutes, which bestowed upon the president extraordinary powers. The committee decided to undertake a “dead wood” operation to eliminate all unneeded or egregious statutes by repeal. We went to every department and agency, "Look over these 2,300 statutes. What do you need, why do you need it?" By agreement with the White House, all the relevant departments and agencies, and with the concurrence of all standing committees with jurisdiction in both houses of congress, we repealed all but a few. The National Emergencies Act, which prescribes the procedure that the president has to follow when he declares a national emergency was passed by both houses and signed into law on September 14, 1976. The president must first state the reasons for the declaration of an emergency, specify in particular the statutory powers he wished to put into force; the declaration and the powers triggered are limited in time. If more time is needed, it can be extended by vote of both houses of congress. After the several years of Emergency Powers and War Powers, I took up the issues of 91
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The Association for Diplomatic Stud
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Investigative committee Oversight C
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Q: Could you tell me when and where
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in Europe and the explosion of New
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of 98. He was my English teacher ju
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MILLER: He was a monster. He was se
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Q: Well, you graduated in ’53. Ho
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structure. Oxford and Cambridge was
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situation, particularly, attitudes
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vacations in between semesters, eig
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student. I was returning from a tra
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Q: Did you go on to get your PhD? M
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Q: I would think so. *** Okay, toda
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us in his car and lent us some mone
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its history and was a patriot in th
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MILLER: The Shah was never accepted
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Q: Well, now let’s talk about the
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Young and his archaeologist son, T.
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Q: Great opener isn’t it … MILL
Page 39 and 40: “What have you got in the village
Page 41 and 42: highly cultured city with a thousan
Page 43 and 44: MILLER: The hierarchy of power was
Page 45 and 46: and along the Persian Gulf there we
Page 47 and 48: and its independence despite the 19
Page 49 and 50: MILLER: Very ephemeral. It’s only
Page 51 and 52: Q: Well, then maybe we should move
Page 53 and 54: he had been chief of protocol, amon
Page 55 and 56: show that they were … MILLER: No,
Page 57 and 58: sustain his absolutism. That was my
Page 59 and 60: technical assistance and the secret
Page 61 and 62: streets. This astounded the nationa
Page 63 and 64: were the most important, and Bob Ko
Page 65 and 66: Symington was one of the key people
Page 67 and 68: a modern state. One could see some
Page 69 and 70: the difficulties arose was in the n
Page 71 and 72: That was the policy when I arrived.
Page 73 and 74: Q: Was the question of authority he
Page 75 and 76: no policy role, I thought that I re
Page 77 and 78: fierce guardian secretary, Martha,
Page 79 and 80: It is a mark of the Senate of this
Page 81 and 82: Today is the 12 th of December, 200
Page 83 and 84: smaller than they are now. Everyone
Page 85 and 86: of everyone. These views were on th
Page 87 and 88: danger. Cutting people down to size
Page 89: very carefully, and with great plea
Page 93 and 94: MILLER: Some, say they're taking it
Page 95 and 96: new Select Committee had to go thro
Page 97 and 98: MILLER: The Hoover people were stil
Page 99 and 100: Q: Who? MILLER: Sam Giancana, a mob
Page 101 and 102: whole, the CIA did its duty. In any
Page 103 and 104: was doing to me and I set the rules
Page 105 and 106: MILLER: They were a right-wing terr
Page 107 and 108: tens of billions of dollars in the
Page 109 and 110: very difficult then and, of course,
Page 111 and 112: problems with senators or the staff
Page 113 and 114: MILLER: The most important informat
Page 115 and 116: But now, that gap has disappeared f
Page 117 and 118: national security changed. National
Page 119 and 120: That's the value of Fletcher, and,
Page 121 and 122: know this June the Diplomatic Acade
Page 123 and 124: went to the American Committee on U
Page 125 and 126: The board was very attractive to me
Page 127 and 128: President of the American Committee
Page 129 and 130: survived that, and was now the tuto
Page 131 and 132: great essay for me, which I treasur
Page 133 and 134: then. Sakharov wrote a draft of the
Page 135 and 136: House. This was Reagan - up to ’8
Page 137 and 138: social revolutionary change. The ch
Page 139 and 140: MILLER: No. The forces of change ha
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MILLER: Yes. The encouragement of h
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Gorbachev, so Yeltsin was sort of p
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Q: Well, why don't we talk about '9
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peculiar sense of stasis even in th
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members on the International Founda
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MILLER: Yes, but he would have won
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Q: This is tape eight, side one, wi
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Q: Was this an American movement mo
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doing, it was a pretty good paralle
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no one stopped them. They had to do
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MILLER: They sided with the people.
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A very good case in point is how th
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Quartet, from St. Petersburg. They
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MILLER: More or less. In all of the
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Q: Well, then, when did you leave M
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no one did very well; neither the R
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laws explicitly said you can’t ha
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policy going to be, and the articul
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people who had worked with him, lik
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Ridgeway. During the time between t
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My instructions were, number one, g
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(Communist bureaucracy). Q: Who was
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MILLER: The attitude in Washington
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Kravchuk and the Ukrainian leadersh
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that message and saw this policy by
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was surrounded by gorgeous gardens.
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When Meshkov asked about U.S. assis
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Ukraine, a longstanding one, which
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language issue really didn't cause
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most dramatic and most destructive
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now running the new system and were
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are now a part of the political age
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MILLER: Yes, that’s more or less
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utility of setting up FBI liaison w
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Q: This is tape 11, side one, with
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Q: Well, now, when you were there,
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invention, was created to provide a
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that would damage the good relation
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sense. There are Ukrainian national
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Ukrainian language nationalist, whe
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north German plain and so on is a f
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toadies and miscreants of one kind
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ase for me to go back to Ukraine an
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art of the country from the earlies
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only because I'm an example of it,
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Q: Absolutely. There's a little bit
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