52. Tommy Whiteshirt-Pawnee-Pawnee, Okla. 60. William Lefthand-Pawnee-Pawnee, Okla. 61. Lily Morgan-Pawnee-Pawnee, Okla (Wife of Harold Morgan, No. 112). 62. Frances Wise-Caddo-Gracemont, Okla. Secretary MORTON. In the matter of executive privilege, I would like to say that I feel that the Department of Justice declined to testify before this committee not on the basis of executive privilege but because the Federal Bureau of Investigation is proceeding with investigations which can well lead to arrests. For that reason, the Department of Justice feels, it is my understanding, that it would be inappropriate for them to testify at this time. In response to the chairman's remarks about the destruction of property, about the violation of the law, I can only say that I wholeheartedly agree with him that such violation of the law is nothing that we can condone. Such occupation of Federal properties, or any other properties for that matter, is nothing we can condone. My mind goes back to Cambridge, Md., my mind goes back to Columbia University, my mind goes back to Northeast and part of Northwest Washington, my mind goes back to Detroit, to Kent State, to Louisiana State University. In all these cases we have seen the normal morality of society break down, and we have seen the end result which is to some degree an equal type of destruction to what we have witnessed here in one of our Government buildings. I think society and Government are groping for the solution. I can be thankful in this case that there was no loss of life. My staff and I may have made errors in judgment. But perhaps we can all be thankful that the only destruction was destruction to physical things that can be replaced and not to human lives, which cannot be replaced. The chronology that has been submitted to the committee is accurate as far as places, times, and events are concerned. I would like to say that I had a complete line of communication between myself and the President's assistants. I first became involved in this affair by telephone. I was out of the city. My immediate executive assistant, who is here, Mr. Robert Hitt, called me frequently. On Thursday afternoon, preceding the Friday in which the temporary restraining order was issued, I talked with Mr. Hitt at great length. He said to me. "I think this is of such magnitude that it will be necessary to go," what he termed, "the legal route," meaning the court route, "to take appropriate actions in this case." And history will show that is the route that was taken. I think there is a misunderstanding as far as the relationship of the Secretary, myself, and the White House staff is concerned. It is obvious that John Ehrlichman was very much interested, as was the President, in resolving this matter, resolving it quickly, and getting the people out of the building, not delaying the work, but also in avoiding violence. This was my interest. In the early negotiations with the Indians it became apparent that they wanted to negotiate with members of the Government other than Interior Department officials. I took the position that I would not negotiate with them until they got out of the building. I didn't feel that I was in a position to exercise proper judgment in discussing the various things that they wanted to discuss, such as the 20-point program that they were interested in. So I said, "I will negotiate with you, or discuss with you, your problems and problems of all Indian people in America *** tribal officers, nontribal officers, people who are on reservations, people not on reservations. But we will do this in an orderly way and in our conference room and we will not be under pressure of threat." Negotiations broke down between the Assistant Secretary and the Indians because they would not negotiate with him. They wanted to see somebody from the White House, and we provided somebody from the White House. This was no takeover on the part of the White House. This was a simple matter of keeping the negotiations going. The result finally was that a restraining order was issued. The judge himself encouraged a longer period of negotiation. I appointed a negotiating team, all of whom are here, headed by the solicitor of the Department, and including two other distinguished lawyers, Mr. Ken Brown on my personal staff and Mr. Hans Walker, a very prominent attorney for the Government on Indian affairs. The issue became housing. Housing was produced. Then when it was produced it was unsatisfactory. We realized at that time we were not negotiating with a team from the group in the building who had any real substantive influence over the total number of people who were there, who were involved in their cause. How many people there were, I do not exactly know, but it was in the neighborhood of 300 or 400. So I don't feel there was any White House takeover. There was no setaside of this Secretary or any of his people. It was the way we thought we could do the best job we could to negotiate those people out of the building without violence. I am absolutely sure, in my mind, that they were prepared, some of them, to martyr themselves. They were looking for a fight; in other words, they were looking for violence as a means of furthering their cause. I thought the best thing we could do for the Indian people was to avoid that violence at all cost. The whole Indian community is fraught with sensitivity. There are multiple points of view, and anything that augments that and makes it more difficult to deal with should be avoided. This we attempted to do. We have learned a lot. This is the first incident of this kind. We have made some mistakes, but when you look at the whole package, we came through it without blowing the building up, without setting it on fire, and without killing any people on either side of the line. We have always had the policy that when Indian groups, whether they were reservation Indian groups or urban Indian groups of any Indian groups, wanted to discuss Indian problems and Indian matters with us the door was open, as the door should be open across all of Government to citizens who want to discuss their problems. Unfortunately, perhaps we were tricked in this incident by proceeding with an open door policy which was arranged by prior meetings with the advance elements of the TBT-the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan. I regret the whole incident, but I am certainly thankful that is was not worse. I do not believe there is any $3 million damage to that building. Mostly it is a mess. Cleaning up a mess doesn't cost $3 million. There have been some file cabinets broken, there has been some art work taken away, there has been some glass and doors pried off their hinges and out of their holdings. But in my opinion the damage is on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars and not millions of dollars. I think these hearings will be very valuable, providing they follow the course that the very distinguished chairman of the full committee has said to set a record, to determine the facts, and hopefully they are not designed to divide elements of the executive or to pit the Congress in a political way against the executive. If we had it to do over again, we would do it differently, but there are many other decisions that were made under the circumstances that I think I would make again. I conclude on the point that there was no taking over by the White House elements. They were used, but I was in full communication with the President's Office and Mr. Ehrlichman, and those people were used because it was felt that they could develop a better negotiating base with the Indian group in the building than officers of the Department of the Interior who had failed to come up with any sort of response from the Indians. In the matter of the payment of expenses, which was the tail end of this proposition, the group was federally subsidized. It received some Federal funds from OEO. The decision to do that was a decision outside of the purview of the Department of the Interior, and the funds were not from the appropriated funds with which the Department operates. I conclude on this point because I don't mean to be taking so much of your time: I hope that what we have learned will help us in restructuring our mission of serving the Indian people across the Nation. I think it will. We are in the process now of developing new concepts, new ways, through which the self-determination procedure can evolve and the welfare and well-being of the Indian people across the Nation can be enhanced. I am working with Commissioner Bruce, Secretary Loesch, and many other scholars in this effort. Perhaps what has happened will trigger us and help us with the Congress in getting some of the needed legislation to put into action new programs, putting out of action old programs which have served their time, and coming up with a whole new portfolio in the relationship of the Indian people to their Government. Certainly I will be glad to answer any questions, as will all others in the Department who were involved in this. I have with me Commissioner Bruce, Assistant Secretary Loesch, Solicitor Melich, and three members of my immediate staff-Mr. Roy Hughes, my special assistant for congressional affairs; Mr. Ken Brown, my personal executive assistant; and Mr. Bob Hitt, chief of staff of the secretarial office. Thank you sir. Mr. HALEY. Does that finish your statement, Mr. Secretary? Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Chairman, I am always glad to see our former member and good friend the Secretary of the Interior before the committee to make a statement or in private conferences to explain activities in his office. He has always been honest and fair with us, and I think we have confidence-I know we have confidence-in his decisions and his activities. I know also that he is placed in a rather embarrassing position this morning in some respects. Being an able and effective Government official, being big and having good shoulders, as well as a wonderful mind, I sometimes wonder if he doesn't carry more water than perhaps he should have to carry in some of his activities in his Department. On the other hand, I understand the situation. I am a political realist myself. I have no desire to try to be other than penetrating to get some facts. You referred, Mr. Secretary, of course, to some other events in the United States which have occurred recently. One of them occurred yesterday. I don't know whether any Government property was destroyed yesterday or not, but private property was destroyed. I am not particularly interested in those having taken place outside of the Federal Government's operation at all. I suppose that is the hazard of working in today's world. You referred to three; one known to all of us as Resurrection City, the other in Potomac Park, and now to this event, the BIA building. These are governmental matters. People's moneys have been taken in each instance with total disregard of the rights of those who furnished the money. I don't know when we get to the place, Mr. Secretary, when we begin to realize that these are moneys of the people. These are tax moneys. You would be the first to agree with me that there is a limit to our Federal Treasury. None of us would try to establish a fact other than there is a limit. You suggest that nobody was hurt. I suppose that this is an admirable position to take. But I would suggest this: Whether it is $100,000 or $2.5 million, as it was in Resurrection City when you count all the costs, or perhaps $600,000 in East Potomac Park, or the hundreds of thousands of dollars involved here, this committee will want to know, we want a running account of every man-hour of labor that the Department of the Interior has to spend in order to bring these records up to date and protect the people of the United States, as well as the Indian population of the United States, because of the destruction of their records. I am sure that this committee will want to know that. Secretary MORTON. I am sure we want to furnish that, too, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ASPINALL. But someplace along the line, Mr. Secretary, when we talk about injury to individuals we have to think of injury to those individuals who are denied the use of the moneys which were regularly authorized and appropriated for their purposes. There may be people in the hospitals, there may be people that have a right-such as children-that have a right to treatment. When we take moneys such as this we hurt the others. Perhaps not directly, but nobody knows. I never have found out why it is that a person who is sold upon his job of doing something is not willing to sacrifice a little bit of blood for a bloody nose or a scratch or something in order to see that equity is kept on the right kind of a plane. These moneys are important and our Treasury just does not have enough money. If we permit this sort of thing to take place continually, it will lead to anarchy, just as I suggest in my opening statement. There is no other way out of it. The chonology which you have given to us and which is in the record shows exactly what took place. It doesn't go into detail as much as I had hoped, but nevertheless it is a running account. Am I to understand that you, Mr. Secretary, were in agreement and in fact issued each order that had to do with the operation of the visit of the Trail of Broken Treaties? Secretary MORTON. No. The answer is "No", Mr. Chairman. I didn't issue each order. I agreed on the policy under which we would operate. I agreed with the action of going to the court to get a temporary restraining order. I agreed to the action of additional negotiation performed by others than those in my Department. We had not been very successful, and I agreed to the decision, or recommendation, rather, that others try, namely, Mr. Garment and his staff, and the members of the staff from the Vice President's Office. I also felt that the responsibility here, once the restraining order was issued, was largely a responsibility of the Department of Justice. So it was obvious to me that members of the Department of Justice, whoever selected, should appropriately attempt to negotiate with the group in the building, and they did. Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Secretary, you were not in town, as I understand it, when the decision was made not to eject the Indians on Thursday night, November 2. Is that correct? Secretary MORTON. That is correct. But I concurred in the decision. that we would get a temporary restraining order, and the delay of getting that order and actually serving that order created the situation in which the Indians were not expelled from the building by force on Thursday night. Mr. ASPINALL. Were you in close enough touch with what was going on around the time that decision was made to know that your man, who was directly in charge here in Washington, D.C., none other than Mr. Loesch himself, was denied the right to sit in the room while the decision was being worked out? Secretary MORTON. I am not sure that I have that information, Mr. Chairman. I think I was fully aware of the fact that the Indian group the negotiating group from the TBT-had requested not to meet with Mr. Loesch. Mr. ASPINALL. It was agreed to by representatives of the White House. Secretary MORTON. I think we are talking about apples and oranges or two different meetings. I will have to get Secretary Loesch to help me on the details of that. But I agreed fully with my assistant, Mr. Hitt. when he said, We believe because of the scope and size of this thing, the number of children involved, the number of women and so forth, the number of people involved, that we should have a temporary restraining order and go that route. I agreed. Whether Harrison was part of that recommendation or not, I would have to ask him. I concurred fully in going the restraining order route and putting this matter before the judge. |