May 23, 2003 - It was thirty years ago this week that the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee set out on the journey that would transform Senator Sam Erwin from an erudite Harvard Law graduate into the epitome of a simple Country Lawyer albeit one who could draw an appropriate passage from Shakespeare to illustrate any point and whose knowledge of Constitutional Law was encyclopaedic. Along the way Senator Baker of Tennessee would pose the question to John Dean that would define the committee’s course, “What did the President Know and when did he know it?” It was a time when both sides of the Senate aisle were populated by Giants who put the nation before partisan advantage.

Baker and Erwin have left the stage. Goldwater and Javits have joined them in the wings of history. They have been replaced by men and women of a more modest stature; who ask few questions and follow their party’s line each fastened firmly to the tail of the creature ahead of them in the parade. When the issue became again; “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Senators Frist and Daschle each vied for position at the head of a parade of pigmies while passing the 9-11 buck to an investigating commission and thus avoid coming to grips with Senator Baker’s seminal question.

Richard Nixon would envy the stone wall that George W. Bush has successfully erected to protect the American People from the truth. There are no men of honor and stature to tear at the stones to reach that precious commodity in the public interest. Senator Thompson, who served on Baker’s committee staff and was the last remnant standing on the Republican side of the aisle and he has left for Hollywood from which he came. Senator Clinton was there as well, a young lawyer learning the ropes on the House side. She seems content to be one of the pigmies, at least for now. Only Senator Byrd, assailed by time, remains standing on the Democratic side asking the lonely questions.

Whether the issue is the pursuit of illusive Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction; corrupt corporations directing and obtaining the Public business; the use of the Department of Homeland Security to intervene in a Texas political fight; or borrowing our grandchildren’s substance to pay the cost of Presidential adventurism the Senate seems content to march in lock-step on a descending spiral staircase. The figures grow smaller yet as they descend from view with their fingers inserted in heir ears lest they blunder and hear the answer to that seminal question.

History has always sent America her giants when she needed them most. They have emerged from the shadows of obscurity to take their place alongside their predecessors in the nation’s pantheon. Where are our giants now?