Special prosecutor office has South Dakota origins

With the specter of a special prosecutor being appointed to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, it’s worth recalling that the origins of the special prosecutor have a strong tie to South Dakota.

In the years following the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon’s resignation, Congress debated a series of reforms known as the Watergate Reform Bill. When it finally passed in 1978 – four years after Nixon resigned – it included an amendment establishing an Office of Special Prosecutor – an independent prosecutor who could be appointed to investigate issues in the event there were conflicts between a president and the attorney general. The amendment, offered in the Senate Judiciary Committee, came from South Dakota Sen. Jim Abourezk.

In his book, “Advise & Dissent,” Abourezk credited his staffer, Chuck Ludlam, for drafting the amendment.

“Such an office seemed necessary to me after watching Nixon order his attorney general not to prosecute members off his administration,” Abourezk wrote. “No one on the committee really wanted the amendment, so I literally had to force it on them by threatening a filibuster in committee. It was eventually accepted, under threat of course, and became law.”

Abourezk noted this week that the office has come and gone. At times, when lawmakers have felt safe from public scrutiny, they’ve abolished the office.

But in 1978, with Watergate still fresh, they were afraid to vote against a reform measure, something that still delights the combative Abourezk.

“The Judiciary Committee was afraid to vote against it, because they were afraid of being called crooks – which they were,” Abourezk said. “They were scared s***less to vote against it, so it passed easily.”

In an oral history he made with the U.S. Senate’s Historical Office, Ludlam described the process of getting a vote on the Watergate Reform Bill as a “b***h.” That’s because the members of Congress wanted to avoid voting.

“The problem was that there wasn’t, as time passed, from the Nixon resignation on August 8, 1974, the momentum for reform dissipated,” Ludlam said. “Worse than that, there were no members in the congress who wanted any of these reforms. There was nobody in the executive branch who wanted any of these reforms. Basically, this was a staff triumph. Basically, it was the staff, Dick Wegman in particular, who knew that if we ever got this up for a vote, we’d win the vote. The problem was getting a vote.”

Besides the Office of Special Prosecutor – which Ludlam acknowledged became controversial – the bill included financial disclosure provisions and restrictions on members and staffers from joining lobbying firms.