Staff Photography, by Charl&s Hardy '
by Vernon Loeb
Staff Writer
WASHINGTON North Carolinians
know where their senior senator stands.
Jesse Helms is a conservative. Ask a
question, and he will give a direct,
unflinching, conservative answer.
But Democrat Robert Morgan, after his
first year in the Senate, is somewhat of an
enigma. He sees the FBI as a threat to
America, but the CIA as a competent, well
disciplined organization.
He says he is aggravated by the press, yet
calls it a necessity to American society. His
rhetoric is filled with allusions to the
common man, but our welfare system, he
says, is wrong. He favors national health
insurance, but feels a comprehensive plan is
impossible.
"I think the first thing you ought to
understand is that I am not a doctrinarian,"
Morgan said. "If you wanted to label me
anything you'd probably call me a pragmatic
experimentalist who's willing to try to find
solutions."
Being pragmatic in Washington, however,
was impossible for the freshman senator.
The Senate moved faster than the N.C.
Attorney General's office, Morgan's
previous job. Washington was not
Lillington, the small Harnett County town
Morgan still calls home.
Last July, after seven months in the
Senate, Morgan's initial enthusiasm was
marred by frustration. "I'll be honest with
you. So far I haven't enjoyed it," he said at
the time. "There's no way I can keep up with
what's going on in the Senate."
Five months later, at the end of his
freshman year in December, he said his
feelings of frustration had only increased.
Now, if the decision to seek reelection was
at hand, Morgan said the answer would be
no? "But being candid With you, I feel better
about it today than I did a year agd and I
hope that a year from now I'll feel even more
so," he added.
Although frustrated, Morgan does not
seem to be intimidated by the Senate. He
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publicly labeled it an antiquated system, and
told his senior colleagues exactly what he
thought of their long standing traditions.
"For instance this morning 1 had Public
W orks and Banking (committee meetings) at
the same time, and 1 believe I had
Intelligence committee at the same time, and
normally, you have the Senate meeting at the
same time," Morgan said.
"This would have worked fine 200 years
ago. But in this day and time we've got to
update," the diminutive senator added
before explaining that such frankness is his
personal rule, not exception. "1' think
controversy is good. I hope that 1 will always
be an outspoken person," he said.
There is perhaps no better place for an
outspoken man than the Senate . Select
Committee on Intelligence, more commonly
known as the Church Committee. Press
comes easy. After keeping a low profile when
the committee investigated the CIA,
Morgan's candid criticism of the FBI spread
his name nationwide.
"1 don't worry about the CIA. The CIA,
with, proper guidance and leadership from
the administration and oversight from
Congress, which it's going to get in the
future, doesn't really constitute a threat to
American liberty," he said. "But the FBI
does when it decides in its own offices what
organizations constitute a security threat."
Except for a brief stint under the Nixon
Administration, Morgan said the CIA has
limited its activities to foreign intelligence
and acted only pursuant to higher authority.
"It may be the security council, it might have
been the president of the United States
they act in such a circumlocutious manner,
that it's always difficult to say that the
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president of the United States ordered this.
"But no person can read the 1 1,000 pages
of testimony that we listened to, and come to
any other conclusion, than that which says
the CIA is a competent, well-disciplined
intelligence organization," he said.
"With regard to the FBI, there are no clear
lines to authority. Secondly, they are dealing
with domestic intelligence. They're dealing
with Americans and civil liberties of
Americans," Morgan said. "Our
constitution doesn't guarantee the civil
liberties of the Congolese, or the Angolans
or the Vietnamese. But it guarantees my
right to be let alone.
"Why is it hard to get this across to
people?" he asked. "Because normally they
don't go out here and harass the Rotary
clubs. They normally harass unpopular or
controversial organizational organizations
like the Panthers, klansmen, the Socialist
Party, the Students for Democratic Society,
the Baptist Student Foundation."
Such outspoken criticism during select
committee hearings from Tar Heel
representatives is nothing new. Morgan's
predecessor, Sam Ervin, criticized the Nixon
Administration to the hilt when he chaired
the select committee on Watergate.
But this is where the visible similarities
between Senator Sam and young Bobby end.
In one sense, Morgan is still moving into
Ervin's large office, which was once John
Kennedy's Washington niche.
In another sense, Morgan has never left
Nofth Carolina. His family still lives in
Lillington, because, Morgan said, he could
not find an affordable house in the
Washington area. So he goes home almost
every weekend.
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But the transition to the cosmopolitan
capital was not a culture shock, he said. "I
just don't feel the warmth of the people, and
the people are not as warm and friendly and
cordial as they are in North Carolina."
North Carolina is still "back home" for
Morgan. "I don't believe there's any state in
the Union in which people are guaranteed
their freedom any more so and enjoy more
privileges than they do in North Carolina."
Often criticized for his frequent absences
from the Senate floor, Morgan said, "1 told
the people back home when I was running
that I wasn't coming up here to build a
Sunday School attendance record."
There is a myth about the importance of
voting records, he said. "There are some
votes that you have to be here for; the other
votes I think you could best use your time
elsewhere," he added. "If you become a slave
to the voting record, 1 don't think you can do
justice to the people."
Morgan seemed glad to dispel this myth.
He said his position on a bill is always
announced if he is not present to vote. He
said also that he often engaged in the practice
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of vote pairing, in which he withdraws his
vote in conjunction with an absent senator
who held the opposing position.
"In the Senate records, that counts as a
vote, but the Congressional Quarterly,
which is a private magazine, doesn't count
it," Morgan said of vote pairing.
The Congressional Quarterly is not the
only arm of the fourth estate that aggravates
Morgan. "The New York Times , as much of
an in-depth paper as it is, could not possibly
give more than 10 inches to a debate that
took two days," Morgan said.
"Therefore you've got even at best a
situation where you can get especially
aggravated if the press, acting in good faith,
fails to report your point of view.
"Then you have people like Novak and
Evans, who no doubt are good reporters, but
they have such a negative approach to
everything 1 don't talk to them. It's a
scathing, bitter way -of writing things,"
Morgan said.
"But by the same token, the advantages of
a free and open press far outweigh the
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irritations that wc sometimes have from
them." he added. "If President Nixon had
been able to operate without being plagued
by a probing press, we could have very well
had a dictatorship in this country today."
But while he called the hawkish Novak
and Evans bitter and negative, some say he
stands on their ideological plane.
"I really don't know what a hawk is. but 1
am for a strong defense. We can never let our
president operate from a position of
weakness, and unfortunately we have
reached a point in this country today where
the quality of Russia's weapons exceed ours
in all but two or three different fields." he
said.
"They've got a million more men in
uniform than we've got and they also think
the American people lack the will to move."
Morgan contends. T
Although the pragmatic Morgan said he
cannot be labeled politically, perhaps' a
fitting categorization would be a guardian of
the American will.
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