Fred Thompson, R.I.P.

RIP, Fred Dalton Thompson.  Fred Thompson was noted for his Watergate committee lawyer, his courageous trial lawyer worker on behalf of Tennessee pardon and parole board whistleblower plaintiff Marie Ragghianti and for his marvelous acting career. 
Less well known was Senator Thompson's March 22, 2000 hearing and subsequent shoddy coverup of the U.S. Department of Energy, predecessors and contractors like Union Carbide and Lockheed Martin poisoning and sickening some 600,000 nuclear weapons plant workers, leading to enactment of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), which I called the $150,000 bribe bill. 
The DOE-drafted EEOICPA, pushed by Thompson, is deeply flawed.  While EEOICPA has disbursed billions of dollars in "CONpensation" payments, it is still  denying workers fair hearings, discovery, appeals and due process.
Thompson died of lymphoma, one of those radiogenic cancers that so many downwinders and many nuclear weapons plant workers die from, poisoned by our own government.
As I informed a House subcommittee's September 2000 hearing:

Senate Amendment 3250 to S. 2549, the Thompson-DOE amendment does not require:

1.         Coverage of all sick workers and residents hurt by DOE toxicants.

2.         Full funding of lifetime compensation and medical benefits by making the polluters pay.

3.         Open public hearings with testimony under oath before independent DOL administrative law judges, as provided for black lung claims (instead, the Thompson amendment uses government doctors to decide claims).

4.         Subpoena power and easy access to documents and answers from DOE and contractor managers (incredibly, Thompson amendment requires a separate federal court lawsuit to force discovery, after first waiting 180 days!).

5.         Appeals to the DOL Benefits Review Board and judicial review by the Court of Appeals, as provided for black lung and longshore workers' compensation claims.

6.         Strict action-forcing deadlines for government action, with claims being granted if the government waits too long.

7.         Payment of full reasonable attorney fees, expert witness fees and other litigation expenses at market rates and a ban on attorney solicitation and percentage contingency fees, as in black lung (instead, attorneys would be free to charge contingency fees, reducing the $200,000 lump sum to as little as $100,000 after expenses).

8.         An end to the Federal Tort Claims Act discretionary function exemption for ultrahazardous activities, preserving worker rights to sue.

9.         Coverage for genetic injuries to spouses, families, children and grandchildren of workers and for injuries caused by dangerous chemicals and heavy metals like cyanide, mercury and hydrogen fluoride.

10.       Independence of the Department of Energy in deciding compensation and independent lifetime medical care and research, free of influence by DOE and its contractors.

Rather than a fitting memorial to sick workers and residents whose suffering made the Cold War victory possible, Sen. Thompson's bill is guaranteed to result in denials and delays.  What is this weak DOE-drafted Senate Floor amendment going to accomplish?

Do DOE and Sen. Thompson think that U.S. government doctors lacking in independence could fairly decide cases? He must not remember the Reagan administration's efforts to pressure independent Social Security Administration administrative law judges to deny benefits, sending SSA judges those who found too many workers disabled to what Rep. Frank called "remedial judging school."

In one of my favorite movies, "The Hunt for Red October," a U.S. Navy admiral (portrayed by none other than veteran character actor Fred Dalton Thompson) said (I must paraphrase): "The Russians don't (go to the bathroom) without a plan." What is DOE's plan?  DOE wants to prevent workers from using subpoena power to prove their injuries in open public hearings.  DOE wants to conceal wrongdoing while throwing crumbs to its victims.   If the devil is in the details, then the Thompson-DOE Amendment is an energumen: it will not silence the victims or meet their needs.

http://www.doesickworker.org/Documents/9-21-00%20Slavin%20Draft%20House%20Hearing.htm

HOWARD HENRY BAKER, JR., R.I.P.

June 26, 2014 Howard Henry Baker, Jr. died today. Few people appreciated who he really was. I did. CBS News Radio at 2 PM just called him a "Texas Republican." They were half right. He was a Tennessean. An East Tennessean. A lawyer, called "old two to ten" for his ability to win light sentences for people convicted of murder. During the Watergate hearings, high school classmates said he reminded them of me (or I resembled him). I thought it was a compliment. Then I read reporting by the Washington Post's Woodward & Bernstein, about how Baker helped Nixon behind the scenes. Then I went to East Tennessee as a journalist, and saw strip mines on his land -- coal mined and burned at TVA's Kingston power plant -- destroying streams and lives. The article that I wrote has not yet been published. At age 20, the Fund for Investigative Journalism supported me, a Nashville Tennessean Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter advised me, but the full story of Baker and East Tennessee coal may await my memoirs. Suffice it to say that Baker and his cronies benefitted from TVA coal contracts. A lot. They ripped off ratepayers to the tune of more than $300 million dollars, including coal quality fraud later confirmed by the U.S. General Accounting Office. In 1975, Ben A. Franklin reported in the New York Times that people became millionaires selling slag piles to TVA. In 1978, the plant superintendent told me TVA was obliged to use dynamite to remove slag from the boilers. This is the same plant whose liquid coal dam collapsed December 23, 2008 after decades of lax oversight (including the six days of overnight hearings chaired in 1975 by Former Senator Howard Henry Baker, Jr., which excluded testimony by Save Our Cumberland Mountains about the Kingston plant). The TVA coal waste inundated homes and destroying creeks and groundwater with 5.4 million gallons of liquid coal ash. See photos below. One time, in Baker's Senate Republican Leader press conference, I asked Baker a long boring question about coal oligopolists turning the table on TVA coal purchasing monopsonists and electric utility monopolists. Always charming, Baker looked at me, winked and replied, "Perhaps." He knew. In 1977, at age 20, I had watched from the U.S. Senate staff gallery as 8Baker successfully amended the Clean Air Act to protect the pollution at TVA's power plant, and his coal contracts, without disclosing to Senators that he had an interest in the power plant's coal -- his former partners owed him $1,000,000, to be paid out of proceeds from TVA coal contracts. TVA quickly ruled that Baker had no conflict of interest, because he had no privity of contract -- is contracts were with the mining companies, not TVA. Whitewash? In six days of TVA oversight hearings in 1975, chaired by Baker as the TVA expert, East Tennessee environmentalists from Save Our Cumberland Mountains were the only group forbidden to testify. SOCM had WBIR-TV video of coal quality fraud, involving "layer loading" by companies mining on Baker's family land. Another whitewash? An earlier hearing by a Tennessee Congressman saw testimony admitting that small coal operators used common sales agents to raise prices, with Rep. Joe L. Evins joking with one, "You believe in collective bargaining for your industry." Price-fixing was tolerated and testified about, with no penalty. No pain for big gains. With Baker's influence, no fraud or antitrust indictments were ver brought against Tennessee coal operators, although the evidence supported it. Howard Baker is the reason. Howard Baker exemplified conflict of interest in American environmental and politics. Howard Baker was a walking conflict of interest, albeit a very short one. If he wasn't poking holes in the Clean Air Act, he was weakening wetland protections. His two staffers on environmental matters -- Rick Herod and Jim Range -- were from his corporate law firm, and went back there. Howard Baker, like some of our crew of leaders in St. Augustine, Florida today, was guilty of using government as a cash register for his business -- both coal and law. Howard Baker got away with it for eighteen years in the U.S. Senate. Howard Baker always enjoyed good press -- he ran for President and few saw through him. Other than United Mine Workers' Journal and reporters Robert Schackne of CBS and Jon Margolis of the Chicago Tribune, most journalists believed Howard Baker's cover story as a righteous dude. Jon Margolis wrote that Baker and other East Tennessee businessmen and politicians were in pari delicti: "They rip off taxpayers together." Baker's flak, Ronald McMahan, said to me when I first arrived in East Tennessee investigating coal in 1978, "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU ARE!" Rebarbative Republican Ronald McMahan was later editor of the Knoxville Journal, where he covered Baker's assets. As a young newspaper editor, I investigated endemic corruption, including TVA, Anderson County government and the U.S. Department of Energy, which emitted 4.2 million pounds of lethal mercury into the creeks and groundwaters and into workers' lungs and brains, without fences, warnings, respirators or decent respect for human life. Then-Rep. Albert Gore, Jr. held investigative hearings, but there was nothing from Senator Howard Henry Baker, Jr., who grew up just a few miles from Oak Ridge and long served on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. After two years as editor of the Appalachian Observer, in a corrupt county in the middle of Howard Baker country, I left East Tennessee in 1983 for Memphis and went to law school. Then I served as a law clerk for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., and then I labored as an AFL-CIO foundation lawyer and then as a whistleblower lawyer. I learned more about Baker and his law firm. I saw and photographed large lighted ads inside Nashville airport advertising his law firm's influence in Japan for Gibson Guitars, at a time when he was U.S. Ambassador to Japan. How louche. Then Baker's corporate law firm, now Baker Donelson, actually sued the Department of Labor, using Department of Energy, seeking to crush and deny any whistleblower investigation to Oak Ridge physician Dr. William K. Reid, M.D., an ethical oncologist, hematologist and internal medicine physician who found high levels of heavy metals and cancers in his patients, connecting it to workplace and community exposures from polluting Oak Ridge plants. Yes, our federal government paid Baker's law firm to harass another federal agency, USDOL, in a bogus attempt to deny Dr. Reid justice. The lawsuit failed but the tactic worked, distracting our efforts with federal funds. Howard Baker's corporate law firm client in the case in quo was Martin Marietta, later Lockheed Martin. My clients and I helped deny contract renewals by DOE to Lockheed Martin at five badly polluting and contaminated nuclear plants with 20,000 workers in three states. At one of those Oak Ridge plants, the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the largest mercury pollution event in world history took place. Howard Baker long served on the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee, but barely uttered a peep about the pollution, which our Appalachian Observer newspaper and then-Rep. Albert Gore, Jr. labored to expose. Another of those Oak Ridge plants (K-25 Gaseous Diffusion uranium enrichment plant) -- once the largest building on this planet -- has ceased to exist. It is being decontaminated, deconstructed and subsidiary, with subsidiary buildings scheduled next for d,d & d. Then I saw my Tennessee law license suspended in 2004. A panel of the Tennessee Supreme Court's Board of Professional Responsibility found First Amendment protected activity in criticizing the Department of Labor and unfair judges. But that finding was reversed by Howard Baker's specially-appointed cousin, Judge Richard Ladd of Kingsport, Tenn., who was the son of the Anderson County, Tennessee Purchasing Director, A.B. "Blye" Ladd, who had received gifts from government contractors in violation of Tennessee law, a fact that I and my counsel had revealed in response to declaratory judgment action brought by school bus contractors trying to defend their contracts. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the suspension, and Judge Ladd's questioned refusal to recuse himself, even after he wrote angrily about my work as a journalist ("monsters in Oak Ridge") and filed a self-serving affidavit trying to excuse what he said from the bench and in writing. I was then disbarred two years later. My Tennessee Bar complaint against Howard Baker and his conflicts of interest was inexplicably lost and never acted upon by the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Howard Baker Highway survives him. A Republican lawyer once told me it was so named because "it's so crooked." Howard Baker did not President want Ronald Reagan to say, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Reagan said it anyway, thank God. As Reagan's White House Chief of Staff, Baker was always the diplomat, protecting Reagan's reputation, and making contacts useful for his law firm. Again, Howard Baker died today. Let the hagiography begin, from the usual sources of such fluff and stuff. The New York Times reports that "Mr. Baker said his biggest contribution to the environment was the creation of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a 125,000-acre national park that overlaps Tennessee and Kentucky and protects the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. The park was created by Congress in 1974." UMWA Journal reported how the park made big profits for Baker's cronies, including the likes of Ted Q. Wilson, who founded the "Southern Labor Union," a "company union" designed to keep workers from joining real unions. Howard Baker was a union-buster, and that is part of his legacy. No mention of that in any reports thus far. At least The Washington Post reports that Baker was "raised in a feudal setting," much like the "lord of the manor" -- 40,000 acres of family land called "Brimstone," which he later sold. Baker's grandfather was a judge, his grandmother was Tennessee's first woman Sheriff, and both his father and stepmother preceded him in Congress. In Tennessee, he was the first Republican ever elected to the U.S. Senate. Baker became s Republican lord of all he surveyed, with two of his apt pupils -- Lamar Alexander and Fred Dalton Thompson -- both succeeding him in the United States Senate. How cool is that! He was Senate Republican Leader for eight years, following in the steps of his civil-tongued first father-in-law, Everett McKinley Dirksen, for whom a large marble Senate office building is named. As one who worked for three U.S. senators during Baker's tenure, I can emphatically agree with Baker's one statement that there were two things he didn't understand: "The Middle East and the House of Representatives." Howard Baker was, unlike so many of today's politicians, willing to listen and willing to compromise (even if some of those compromises were unethical, and hurt people, like those suffering in Appalachia from strip-mining). He supported the Panama Canal Treaty, and supported some progressive legislation. He supported Fair Housing, and he inspired some African-American support, after initially campaigning against civil rights laws. But he also tried to inspire an African-American to run for President in 1972 to pull support from the Democratic nominee. He grew up in a culture of dodgy Tennessee politics, and loved to tell stories. He grew in the job, whether as Senator, White House Chief of Staff or lawyer. He was a photographer, and had a sense of humor and self-deprecating wit. Nearly everyone liked him. Rest in peace, Howard Henry Baker, Jr. Most Americans hardly got to know him. Even though I saw his faults, firsthand, I still admire Howard Baker. "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Great line. Great delivery. Smooth politician. Baker blew a chance to be on the United States Supreme Court, as John Dean revealed in his book, "The Rehnquist Choice." Nixon liked Baker, who was slow to get back to him, flying to Tennessee to meet with his banker, apparently concerned about his coal deals. Some of the pertinent tapes were withheld due to financial privacy, but will now will likely be unsealed -- the world will learn more about Baker's coal deals, at last. If only Howard Baker weren't so crooked. If only Howard Baker had cared about the grinding poverty of Appalachia, and done something besides help corporations and the wealthy. He could have been more of a healer, and less of a wheeler-dealer. His life would have made more of a difference to average Tennesseans, like the poor people in Appalachia, who were the subscribers to our Appalachian Observer newspaper. I do forgive Howard Baker, although at times he reminded me of The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." Most of the time, I remembered him as a Coal Man. (In fact, while investigating him in East Tennessee, staying with friends, the Top 40 radio station woke me up every morning at the same time with the hit song, "I'm a Soul Man." Upon hearing it the first groggy morning, I thought it might easily 4be re-written about Baker: Heart and soul, Howard Baker was a Coal Man (even as United States District Judge Robert Taylor once remarked to me in the Clerk's office, circa 1978, "This is turning into a coal court!") An apt question for future writers: "what did Baker know and when did HE know it?" Howard Baker leaves a widow, former Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, his second wife (daughter of 1936 Republican nominee Alf Landon). He also leaves a 125-year old multinational corporate law firm bearing his name, one that is highly sophisticated and computerized, now with 650 lawyers in 20 cities, with clients that include the Royal Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the world's largest arms merchant, Lockheed Martin. The United States Courthouse in Knoxville, Tennessee was long ago named the Howard Henry Baker, Jr. Courthouse, with an oil painting in the lobby showing Howard Baker as if he were larger than he was in life. (He stood about 5'2"). Imagine, if you will, being an ethical physician suing a nuclear weapons contractor or other party defended by the Howard Baker law firm, entering the Howard Baker Courthouse, with judges chosen by Howard Baker, who chose a Chief Clerk who was the lawyer for Lockheed Martin (who refused to shake my hand upon representing the first whistleblower at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1991). How would you feel? That's East Tennessee -- a beautiful place run by tyrants, a place where the workers and their lawyers are afraid, very afraid, to blow the whistle on the likes of Oak Ridge, Tennessee nuclear weapons plants to this day. Thanks to Howard Baker and his legacy, East Tennessee remains a third world country, an anti-labor tyranny, a place where they renamed "Labor Day" in Knoxville as "Boomsday," in hopes of erasing labor unions. As Juan Ortega y Gassett said, "I am me and my surroundings." ("Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias.") That repressive environment is NOT one of the legacies of Howard Baker you will likely read in the obituary-hagiographies. It remains to be written in investigative reporting, biographies and my memoirs. Rest in Peace, Howard Henry Baker, Jr., wherever you are! "We, the People" hardly knew you. Copyright 2014 Edward Adelbert Slavin, Jr. All Rights Reserved Ed Slavin Box 3084 St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084 904-377-4998 "Did you know that coal provides 64.8% of Tennessee's power? Almost half of the electricty we use everyday comes from coal. The average retail price is 6.97 cents per kilowatt hour. This ranks Tennessee with the 15th-cheapeast electricity in the nation."

Fred Dalton Thompson was on Meet the Press Yesterday, Looking as Wicked and Evil As Ever

So glad McCain didn't name him to the ticket -- he'd be preening about the South appealing to the KKK vote. Thompson's sold out nuclear weapons workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but like the "energizer bunny," he just keeps going and going.

Loved what Tom Brokaw said to him at the beginning and end of the piece (about how Thompson resembled the gamblers at the pool hall in S.D. where Brokaw hung out as a kid, and that Thompson looks like someone who knows what it means to "run the table.")

Thompson Drops Out of Presidential Race

Good riddance. See below

Does Edvard Munch's "Silent Scream" Capture the Mood in Fred Thompson's Abortive Presidential Campaign Tonight?

Thomas Edsall and Huffington Post on Big Tobacco Lobbyist Fred Thompson Running for President

Thomas B. Edsall
The Huffington Post •
Fred Thompson: The Philip Morris Candidate
June 25, 2007 10:47 PM

If Fred Thompson is elected president, he will be the first federally registered lobbyist to become Commander in Chief. Since his days as top minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, Thompson has collected over $1 million in lobbying fees. In return, he has provided exceptional access to those in power.

Thompson's prospective presidential bid stands out in another respect: No campaign has been so dominated by staffers and advisers who have worked on behalf of Philip Morris, one of the world's leading tobacco conglomerates and a leading force in promoting cigarette smoking.

Thompson's lobbying career demonstrates his striking skill in capitalizing on his own government service and on the success of his friends in public office.

In 1981, when the Republicans took control of the Senate, Thompson's employer and mentor, Senator Howard Baker, became Majority Leader. With Baker's rise to power, Thompson's lobbying fees from Westinghouse and other clients shot up from a paltry $2,575 in 1980 to $100,438 in 1981 -- then a considerable sum.

That was peanuts compared to the fees Thompson got from just one lobbying client 23 years later, after another Tennessee friend, Bill Frist, was elected Senate Majority Leader.

Equitas, a British firm seeking to minimize the cost of damages to Lloyds of London under pending legislation governing asbestos liability (asbestos is a known cause of respiratory diseases and of mesothelioma, a lethal lung cancer) in 2004 hired Thompson as part of a massive, $7.88 million lobbying drive.

For two years' work, which consisted primarily in guaranteeing Equitas access to Senator Frist, Thompson was paid $760,000.

As for Thompson's personal ties to Philip Morris, they are evident not so much in the tobacco company's contributions to him -- just $13,000 to his two Senate campaigns -- but in how loaded his still unannounced presidential campaign is with people strongly tied to the tobacco company and its parent company, Altria.

Take Tom Collamore, who is expected to become Thompson's campaign manager. In 1992, Collamore went to work for Philip Morris and later became vice president of public affairs at Altria.

Howard Baker, who has been a top adviser to Thompson, represented Philip Morris as a lobbyist at Baker Donelson Bearman Berman Caldwell & Berkowitz in 1998 and 1999. Baker was paid $1.92 million for his work. In addition Baker represented four other tobacco companies during that period and received another $1.71 million from them.

In the 1990s, Philip Morris financed the creation of a pro-smoking citizens' group called the National Smokers Alliance to fight anti-tobacco initiatives. Much of the actual organization of the Smokers' Alliance was performed by a Washington public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller. One of the key players at Burson-Marsteller involved in the Smokers' Alliance was Ken Rietz, who recently retired as CEO.

Rietz is now coordinating much of the early media strategy for the Thompson campaign.

Finally, the campaign is expected to hire the polling firm McLaughlin & Associates. The polling company lists both Philip Morris and the National Smokers' Alliance among its clients.

Philip Morris has been one of the strongest corporate backers of the GOP. From 1994 to 2002, the last year corporations were permitted to make direct "soft money" contributions to the political parties, Philip Morris gave $9.5 million to Republican committees and $1.28 million to their Democratic counterparts.

Mark Corallo, spokesman for the Thompson bid, said all of the campaign's staffers and advisers have been picked because of their expertise and, in some cases, their long-standing relationships with Thompson.

"This is hardly a story," Corallo said but in an election year, when the public is more eager than ever to escape from the grip of special interests working against the public interest, Corallo is unlikely to be the last word.


Comments for this post are now closed

AP: Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer

Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate
By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jul 7, 4:38 PM ET

Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes.

Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office.

Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes across as a partisan willing to cooperate with the Nixon White House's effort to discredit the committee's star witness.

It was Thompson who tipped off the White House that the Senate committee knew about the tapes. They eventually cinched Nixon's downfall in the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up.

Thompson, then 30, was appointed counsel by his political mentor, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, the top Republican on the Senate investigative committee. Thompson had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, Tenn., and had managed Baker's re-election campaign. Thompson later was a senator himself.

Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called "dumb as hell." The president did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel.

This assessment comes from audio tapes of White House conversations recently reviewed by The Associated Press at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and transcripts of those discussions that are published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes," by historian Stanley Kutler.

"Oh s---, that kid," Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson's appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.

"Well, we're stuck with him," Haldeman said.

In a meeting later that day in the Old Executive Office Building, Baker assured Nixon that Thompson was up to the task. "He's tough. He's six feet five inches, a big mean fella," the senator told Nixon.

Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon's lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.

"We've got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson," Buzhardt told Nixon in an Oval Office meeting on June 6, 1973. The meeting included a discussion of former White House counsel John Dean's upcoming testimony before the committee.

Dean, the committee's star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew about the break-in and cover-up if he was granted immunity against anything incriminating he might say.

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not "very smart."

"Not extremely so," Buzhardt agreed.

"But he's friendly," Nixon said.

"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."

Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.

"I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day," Buzhardt said. "Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination."

Later in the same conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was "willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly."

Thompson, who declined comment for this story, described himself in his book, "At That Point in Time," published in 1975, as a Nixon administration "loyalist" who struggled with his role as minority counsel. "I would try to walk a fine line between a good-faith pursuit of the investigation and a good-faith attempt to insure balance and fairness," Thompson wrote.

When Dean began testifying on June 25, he implicated Nixon in the break-in and cover-up. But his testimony had little legal impact because it was his word against the president's.

During Dean's testimony, Baker asked the question that became the embodiment of the Watergate scandal: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Thompson is sometimes credited with supplying the question to Baker.

The question was widely perceived at the time as an example of Baker's willingness to press for truth at the expense of his party's leader. Historian Kutler, however, said he believes that in the context of Dean's testimony, the question was Baker's attempt to point out that the evidence hinged on one witness's word.

It was not until three weeks later — after the disclosure of the existence of tape recordings that might either corroborate or disprove Dean's testimony — that Baker's question took on new meaning, Kutler said.

At a hearing on July 16, Thompson asked former White House aide Alexander Butterfield: "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

Butterfield's confirmation of the recordings set off a cascade of events that led to Nixon's resignation 13 months later.

The question made Thompson instantly famous. His political Web site — http://www.imwithfred.com — prominently notes: "Friends in Tennessee still recall seeing the boy they'd grown up with on TV, sitting at the Senate hearing-room dais. He gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office."

What rarely is mentioned is that Thompson knew the answer to the question before he asked it. Investigators for the committee had gotten the information out of Butterfield during hours of behind-the-scenes questioning three days earlier, on July 13.

Thompson was not present, but a Republican investigator immediately tracked him down at the Carroll Arms Hotel bar where he was meeting with a reporter. Thompson called Buzhardt over the weekend to tip off the White House that the committee knew about the tapes.

"Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone's interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee," Thompson wrote in his book.

Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the committee who was part of the Butterfield questioning, said he was outraged by Thompson's tip-off.

"When the prosecutor discovers the smoking the gun, he's going to be shocked to find that the deputy prosecutor called the defendant and said, 'You'd better get rid of that gun,'" Armstrong said in an interview.

The committee chairman, Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., had agreed to allow Thompson to question Butterfield first at the July 16 hearing as a show of bipartisanship because a GOP investigator had elicited the initial information from Butterfield.

"Fred (Thompson) and Baker carried water for the White House, but I have to give them credit — they were watching out for their interests, too," Kutler said. "They weren't going to mindlessly go down the tubes for this guy."

___

On the Net:

Nixon presidential materials: http://tinyurl.com/2bqg9a