Nixon looms over hearing on censure

WASHINGTON — Memories of Watergate, break-ins and cover-ups hovered like the ghosts of shamed presidencies over a Senate hearing Friday on whether to censure President Bush.

There was John Dean, the former White House counsel who exposed Richard Nixon in the Watergate cover-up nearly 33 years ago, calling for Bush's censure.

Of fresher vintage was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who as a House member eight years ago helped manage the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Though Graham once advocated censure for Clinton, on Friday he made a case for sparing Bush.

At issue was a resolution sponsored by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., to censure the president for authorizing warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens as part of the administration's anti-terrorism campaign.

Democrats invoked Nixon's name as they attacked Bush's decision to let the National Security Agency (NSA) bypass judges to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mail when a possible terrorism suspect is at one end of the line.

They said the practice violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires warrants for U.S. wiretaps in most cases.

Liberals galvanized

The censure motion has galvanized liberal activists, but most congressional Democrats have turned their backs on Feingold's effort.

The motion has attracted only two other co-sponsors and only two of the Senate Judiciary Committee's eight Democrats showed up Friday at a hearing convened by Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. No votes were taken.

Significantly, however, the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said for the first time that he "is inclined to believe" censure is an appropriate sanction against Bush.

Graham and Specter disagreed with Bush's claim of having the legal authority to wiretap U.S. citizens but rejecting that the president deserves an official reprimand.

Specter noted Feingold's censure resolution did not accuse Bush of "bad faith," prompting Feingold to respond:

"If you want the words 'bad faith' in there, let's put them right in, because that's exactly what we have here."

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., dismissed the hearings as "surreal" and "beyond the pale."

Conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein, an active supporter of Bush's judicial nominees, condemned the president's wiretapping program and said Bush's justifications undermine the government.

"You can lose a republic on the installment plan every bit as efficiently as, at one fell swoop, with a coup d'état," he said.

"Star" of hearing

The center of attention was Dean, 67, the author of the recent book "Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush." Dean, who spent four months in prison for his part in the Watergate scandal, joked that senators needed to "hear from the dark side."

Bush, Dean told the committee, should be censured.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

The harshest exchange involved Dean and Graham, who rejected the comparison of Bush's surveillance operations to Watergate, a political scandal that involved illegal wiretapping, burglary and abuse of power aimed at Nixon enemies.

Nixon tried to cover up the burglary of Democratic Party offices "for national-security reasons," Dean said, because he feared it would lead to evidence of an earlier White House-sponsored burglary related to Vietnam War protester Daniel Ellsberg.

"Give me a break," Graham interjected. "He covered it up to save his hide."

"No, sir," Dean said. "You're showing you don't know that subject very well."

Cornyn, noting Dean was a "convicted felon," said it "strikes me as very odd that the Judiciary Committee is giving" Dean an opportunity to market his book.

Dean said his new book wouldn't be in stores until summer, adding mischievously that Cornyn would be in it.

Asked later to elaborate, Dean said: "I have a book coming out in July called 'Conservatives Without Conscience.' He happens to be mentioned in the book."

Material from The Washington Post and The Associated Press is included in this report.