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Harvard's Raoul Berger, a specialist in the history of Executive privilege, scoffs at the Nixon claims of broad staff immunity from questioning as "utterly ridiculous — it's Executive propaganda without historical precedent. Nixon is all wrong on this." Yale Law Professor Alexander Bickel agrees, noting that some subjects discussed with the Pres ident are protected by the doctrine, but individuals as such are not. Nixon's attempt to put all aides under the doctrine, says Bickel, "can't hold water."
Even a high Justice Department official conceded under heavy questioning by a House subcommittee last week that a White House aide could not claim Executive privilege if a committee asked about any "wrongdoing" by the aide. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary C. Lawton agreed, for example, that Dean, Nixon's counsel, would have to testify if he was accused of obstructing the FBI'S inquiry into the Watergate crimes. At his unsuccessful nomination hearings to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI, Gray testified that Dean "probably had lied" to FBI agents. Dean was given more than 80 FBI reports on Watergate by Gray, even though he had recommended the employment of one of the convicted wiretappers, G. Gordon Liddy.
Presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler stressed the Administration's willingness to cooperate with investigations by noting that Nixon had ordered his aides to appear if subpoenaed by the federal grand jury in Washington that is probing the Watergate affair. Yet the gesture was meaningless, since the President has no power to exempt his aides from any such subpoenas. This also puts the White House in a new bind: if it responds to subpoenas from the Judicial Branch, why not from the Legislative Branch? Ervin fully intends to ask his committee to subpoena members of the White House staff if they do not respond voluntarily.
Bible Country. Ervin considers himself "a liberal in the true sense of the word," in the Jeffersonian sense that Government exists to make men free rather than to control them. That emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility—so often advocated by Richard Nixon—was common among Ervin's Scottish Presbyterian forebears. It is also a dominant view in the mountains around Morganton, N.C. (pop. 14,000), where Ervin has spent nearly his entire life, except when away on official duties. It is Bible country, in which many lifelong residents still see card playing and dancing as evil, and tolerate only a thirst for moonshine liquor. Ervin, who drinks only moderately and spoils fine bourbon by mixing it with ginger ale, has a keen taste for the difference between good and bad home brew.
Ervin's father Sam Ervin Sr. was a self-educated, sharp lawyer who passionately hated F.D.R. and the kind of centralized authority that Roosevelt seized. As early as age 15, "Little Sam" began visiting his father's one-room office across from the county courthouse to learn law the way Father had, by reading one dry legal text after another.