President's staff to Mr. Hitt seeking our concurrence or seeking our advice, and I told Bob Hitt Mr. ABOUREZK. This was on the Thursday? Secretary MORTON. This was on the Thursday. (Continuing.) That I felt that we should go the court route, that this was-had reached a point where that was the best thing to do. Now, you can question the judgment of that. Knowing all of the circumstances, the volatility of the situation, and all the circumstances that surrounded it at that moment, this was the decision that was made, and Harrison Loesch was given that information by Mr. Patterson. Mr. ABOUREZK. By Mr. Patterson? Secretary MORTON. I think that is correct. Mr. ABOUREZK. Thank you. Mr. Loesch, then, you never did answer my second question. Was that discussed about the nearness of the election coming up, was that ever discussed with you by anybody in the White House? Mr. LOESCH. No, not that night. Mr. ABOUREZK. Any night? Mr. LOESCH. Yes, later on there was some general conversation. Mr. ABOUREZK. With who? Mr. LOESCH. Oh, goodness. Secretary MORTON. Jerry Wilson. Mr. LOESCH. Yes, that is right, Jerry Wilson for one. Mr. ABOUREZK. How about people in the White House? Mr. LOESCH. I do not think anybody-I do not believe anybody either in the Department or others that were present on that Thursday night, even prior to the election if you want to know, I do not think we did; I did not, and I do not believe anybody did. I think we were looking at the other aspects of the matter. Later on, over the weekend, there was some general conversation about the fact that the court had issued an order and that we were conducting further negotiations and maybe it would be just as well to wait until Tuesday, and so on and so on. But it was pretty general. and it did not have anything to do, in my opinion, with the decisions that were made. Mr. ABOUREZK. Did you discuss that proposition that the election was coming up, did you discuss that at any time with anybody in the White House or anybody in the White House staff? Mr. LOESCH. No, I did not. As a matter of fact, I never talked to anybody on the White House staff except Mr. Patterson, though I was-well, that is wrong, too. I talked later by telephone on other matters with various White House staff, and I was present in some meetings with still a fourth member of the White House staff on Friday and Saturday. But the only one I talked to on Thursday night was Mr. Patterson. Mr. ABOUREZK. Let me ask it this way: Did you ever hear anybody in the White House staff discuss with you or anybody else the fact that this thing might be held off until after the election was over? Mr. LOESCH. I do not think I did. Mr. Abourezk. If I did, I cannot remember it now, and I am not trying to duck it either. I would tell you if I did. Mr. ABOUREZK. Yes. Secretary MORTON. I can tell you, if this helps you any, I certainly did. I discussed it with a good many people, the whole political situation, because I think that that was unquestionably aimed right at the election time by AIM-that is a good pun-and I took that into consideration and discussed the politics of it very thoroughly. Mr. ABOUREZK. On the 2d of November? Secretary MORTON. I discussed it even before they got here, with various people. I discussed their timing of this. I discussed it on Thursday over the telephone with Bob Hitt, when he called me in Indianapolis. I discussed it when I arrived Friday morning in the city, Washington. Mr. ABOUREZK. With who. Mr. Secretary? Secretary MORTON. I discussed it with a whole battery of members of the White House staff, plus Bob Hitt. Mr. ABOUREZK. My point is, I guess I would be surprised if you did not Secretary MORTON. I would, too. Mr. ABOUREZK (continuing). Discuss it. That is why I could not understand. Secretary MORTON. If there were any political judgments made. and I do not feel that there were, I think the politics of this thing, since this has been brought up, could have come off either way, as far as the effect that it would have had on the election. My judgment was that it would not have an effect on the election, unless you had a wholesale massacre of a lot of people, or that type of thing. As far as getting the people out of the building, we were trying to get them out through negotiation rather than through the use of force, because there was a large number of people, the intelligence indicated some of them were prepared, even today, as they said, to die for this cause. It seemd to me the best for everybody, in the political-with a little "p"-spectrum. Indian people, people who are interested in Indian affairs, was that if this thing could be done without violence it would be better done that way. I discussed this on the telephone with John Ehrlichman and I discussed it directly with Bob Hitt, who I am sure was in contact with Mr. Krogh, Mr. Garment, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Robertson, and others, and my views were delivered by him to them. Mr. ABOUREZK. Let me ask you this as well. Do you think it would have been handled any differently had it not been a week-say it happened a week after the election? Secretary MORTON. I think to restructure this, you can conjecture a lot of things. I have searched my soul for the answer to that question. We were plowing some new ground. This was the first experience of this kind, very frankly, that I had with the exception of Cambridge, Md. This was the first situation such as this that I found myself in. You can always look back. I think every captain that has lost a ship can look back. I am sure the fellow on the Titanic probably said to himself, why the hell did I hit this iceberg. But I am not so sure that if you had the same set of circumstances that you were in that you would do a lot of things differently. Now of course we have done this once. I can assure you that the BIA building or the Department of Interior building is not going to be hijacked again. That is what it was. It was very cleverly done. These people had done a beautiful job of convincing us, and they did, that they were coming here on a peaceful mission, that they were coming here to point up and bring the Indian cause out in the open at a very sensitive time in American politics. And they were not coming here to fortify the building, occupy the building and to mess it up. They were very smooth in that. And I am not so sure that they had planned from the beginning to do that. I have no way of knowing and I hope this committee can find out over the weeks. This would be something that we would like to know. But it has certainly changed our attitude about an unresearched, if that is what you can call it, an unresearched open-door policy as far as large numbers of people coming into any of our buildings. I think we have learned a lot. It has been costly, though not as costly as it could have been. But I think there is a sensitivity, obviously, during a time 4 or 5 days before or a week before or 2 weeks before an election. Those people were trying to take advantage of that. It reached the point where I was going to try to diminish their opportunity of taking that advantage through whatever process I could take. Mr. TAYLOR. Will the gentleman yield to me? Mr. Secretary, you state that the BIA building will not be hijacked again. How would you prevent it in the future? Secretary MORTON. Well, I think that the best way to do it is when you begin to identify the hijackers. That is what we are trying to do as far as aircraft are concerned. What we are trying to do there is to identify the hijacker through whatever means to develop some sort of surveillance over people getting on the aircraft. Through massive and expensive processes they are trying to determine in advance who the types are and who have the highest probability of attempting things like this and taking some action. The BIA building was not flown to Cuba, but there was a very similar thing here in terms of the cleverness, and I think a good deal of this was just happenstance by them. I am not so sure when they came here that they had any real plan to do precisely what they did, but circumstances and the volatility grew there-this is something I hope this committee will get into-films were shown, every method of inciting a disturbing situation by certain leaders in this group was used. I am told. I think we have been forewarned. I want to hopefully develop strong leadership in the Indian community that is opposed to this through the development of responsibility in leadership on the part of the Tribal Chairmen's Association, which I think should be the true leaders of the community. I think we want to do a better job of identifying the radical personnel who we could suspect in this case and take a much more precautionary attitude than we have taken before. Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Secretary, your staff did know that some of the leaders of this group had served prison terms? Secretary MORTON. That is correct. Mr. ASPINALL. You went on the assumption, I suppose, that a person who is indicted, found guilty and serves a sentence, is entitled to move about as a free person from the time of the end of the service of his sentence, but you did know the character, the quality of these people who were the leaders and you did everything in your power not to become involved up until the time they got here; is that a correct conclusion? Secretary MORTON. That is correct. That certainly is correct. I thought that any involvement or negotiations that I had with them in any substantive way would tend to downgrade the leadership-which I think we are all betting on, the duly elected leadership of the Indian people. I am perfectly willing to discuss substantive Indian matters with non-Indian leadership or any other American citizen who has a real desire to discuss these. I think this is part of my job, but certainly Mr. ASPINALL. Now in order to bring this out, the Assistant Secretary was doing his best to follow your wishes to not become involved; is that correct? Secretary MORTON. That is correct; that is absolutely true. Mr. ASPINALL. You did have some people in your organization, in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who were helping and aiding and abetting this pilgrimage; is that correct? Secretary MORTON. Oh, I think it is absolutely correct. You have testified that the common practice for officials of the BIA and Interior Department to meet with Indian groups and others is more of an open door policy; is that correct? Secretary MORTON. That is correct. Mr. SEBELIUS. Now, do you feel that this element of mob rule developed or it was planned? I just wonder whether you had a feeling. Secretary MORTON. I wish, Keith, I could answer that accurately. I think this is something that we ought to try to determine. There is not any question in my mind that there was a broad spectrum of attitude among the people in that caravan, that there were many, many there who were peacefully attending the program, their demonstration, whatever you want to call it, who did not intend to come here and hijack the building. But I cannot say what is in the back of some of the minds who went there. The thing that really disturbed me early on was the fact that the negotiating group of the occupants of the building constantly changed. Agreements that those negotiators made in the various meetings, meetings with the negotiating team that I appointed, meetings with the negotiators that were members of the White House staff and others, in their attempt to negotiate this, those were not kept in good faith. Mr. SEBELIUS. I cannot help but feel that some of them were in good faith and came here to try to do a job and others in the background got a hold and took over; that is my own personal conclusion. Secretary MORTON. That is true, and I am not saying that there were not individuals in the BIA structure down the line who were very sympathetic to these individuals. Now whether that sympathy extended to aiding the destruction of the building or not, I think that is an unfair judgment to try to make, but hopefully we are going to find that out. Let me add one point here for the record. It is difficult for any Secretary of the Interior to buck the political structures and the civil service regulations in a manner necessary to make massive changes in the Federal Government in order to bring about harmony with all the policies of the Secretary, an administration, or legislation that has been passed by the Congress. Mr. SEBELIUS. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I thank the gentleman. Mr. ASPINALL. I yield back to Mr. Abourezk. Mr. ABOUREZK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure, Mr. Secretary, that I am entirely clear on exactly what precipitated the barricading of the building. Mr. ASPINALL. If my colleague will yield, we will get to that just as soon as we get through with this. Because what I am trying to do is go back and pick up what took place before this happened. :: Secretary MORTON. A very quick answer to your question is, I am not either. Mr. ABOUREZK. I will defer, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ASPINALL. All right. I yield to the gentleman from Montana. Mr. MELCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was not going to pursue this point, but I think it is the logical place now. It is definitely established, Mr. Loesch, that you had intended to clear the building after the 8 o'clock meeting and that your orders to do so, having had, as I understand it, 125 police officers, riot-trained police officers, present and on hand to do so; is that correct? Mr. LOESCH. That is correct. Mr. MELCHER. And your order to do so or intention to do so was countermanded not by the Secretary, because as I understand the testimony to date, the Secretary was not present, but your order was countermanded by the White House. Mr. LOESCH. Mr. Melcher, let me go back a minute. I had arranged during the day and early evening both for the presence of the police and for this meeting. Now, it was my intention at 8 o'clock at night on Thursday, it was my intention to adjourn the meeting at 9 o'clock. Of course, I assumed I would be in the meeting. I am frank to tell you it was my intention to adjourn the meeting at 9 o'clock with the notification to the delegation of Indians to go on back across the street and tell everybody to get out because the police were going to move in at 10 o'clock that night. That was my intention. Now, I was there is no question about this; first of all, I was not in the meeting over a very few minutes; second, the meeting did not quit at 9 o'clock, it went substantially beyond that, until approximately 11 o'clock: thirdly, there is no question but that Secretary Morton concurred in overruling my intention. But let me make it clear that I had no argument with Secretary Morton or, as he explained, the delivery system that was cranked into this. Mr. MELCHER. If it has been explained, I have not heard it. When did you talk to the Secretary? .. Mr. LOESCH. I did not talk to him personally at all. Mr. MELCHER. No, but you talked to somebody in the White House. Mr. LOESCH. Yes, sir. Mr. MELCHER. Mr. Patterson? Mr. LOESCH. He was not in the White House; he was at the meeting. Mr. MELCHER. But he represented the White House? Mr. LOESCH. Yes, sir. |