Rufus Edmisten Event at Wilson Library, Delivering Subpoenas to the White House, September 20, 2012

Rufus Edmisten Event at Wilson Library, Delivering Subpoenas to the White House, September 20, 2012

This event was an interview of Rufus Edmisten by Chancellor Holden Thorp marking the donation of the Rufus Edmisten Papers to the Southern Historical Collection. This clip is about Edmisten's experience delivering two subpoenas to the White House.

Edmisten, Rufus, 1941-

September 20, 2012

Thorp, H. Holden, 1964-; Michalak, Sarah

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

audio/mp4

English

Sound

https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/items/show/7901

“So, it came down to being the subpoena taken down there, and of course, I wanted to take it down there and I sort of chose myself to do it.” *laughter* “Good choice.” “And I remember this guy named Terry Lenzner, he egged in on it, and I took this young lady that worked for me on the Separation of Powers Subcommittee named Polly Demint. And we had a battalion of Capitol Hill police officers, and I have a picture in my office that looks like they’re leading me off to the worst prison in the world.” *laughter* “I’m surrounded, and so we, there was no opening up the gates, but it was just almost like something out of the Bible. For some reason, Pennsylvania Avenue opened up; we went down through there, and the press was just enormous in numbers—following us and they were sticking Geiger counters out at you and all sorts of things. We got down there, and I had called ahead to make sure that somebody was there to receive it. And, so, we were not in that gate that you [Chancellor Thorpe] talked about. We were relegated over to the Executive Office Building which to me is the most wonderful building in the world. God, the architecture, you probably know. And we got through the outer gate and then we were met by Nixon’s, what I call, the Council of the Week. You know, he’d hire somebody and if they didn’t give him the advice he wanted, he’d fire them.” *laughter* “About a council a week. And this one was Leonard Garment, and the other person was Professor Charles Alan Wright who was a University of Texas law guy. And we stepped in, and I did my little bit. I said ‘I’m here on behalf of the Senate Senator Ervin and the Committee and Senate Resolution 52;' I think that was it. And I present that, and now this is a really smart aleck, Carolina thing to do. Ervin always had one of these little blue Constitutions; he carried around in his pocket. Well, this wasn’t planned, but I had one in my back pocket. Well, as soon as we had done the obligatory things and they had someone go back and make copies of the subpoenas, I whipped that little boy out and said, ‘by the way, I’ve heard you all need one of these down here too.’” *laughter*

00:02:27