Leaving Gerald Ford, I rushed to the Senate Office Building for my 5 PM appointment with Senator Cooper. Fortunately, there is a subway that links the House and the Senate. When I got to the Senator Reception Room, I was told Senator Cooper was still on the Senate floor. His staff assistant, Baily Gard, then escorted me to the Senate gallery, from which I watched Senator Wayne Morse delivering a speech on Vietnam to a nearly empty room. Among the handful of senators in attendance was Senator Cooper. “The senator is too much of a gentleman to leave,” Gard said to me. “Do you mind waiting?”
The speech went on for nearly an hour, and then Senator Cooper met me in his office. He was a distinguished-looking man in his early sixties. A former ambassador to India, he weighed his words carefully. Unlike Ford, he did not record our conversation. When I asked him how the commission worked, he said, “Every member made his own unique contribution to the commission. We didn't take any evidence at face value. We thrashed out our ideas at executive meetings.” When I asked him how the lawyers on the staff handled the investigation, he answered, “Frankly, I don’t know. Except for the chief justice, commission members did not get involved with the operations of the staff.” Indeed, he did not even know the names of the lawyers who supervised the investigation, took the depositions of the witnesses, and drafted the chapters of the report.
Forty-five minutes into the interview, a bell rang, signaling the Senate was back in session, and Senator Cooper courteously excused himself, saying, “It is a busy day.”