Scope and Content Note
The papers of Howard Scholer Liebengood (1942-2005) span the years 1950-1982, with the bulk of items concentrated in the period 1973-1981, during which Liebengood worked for the United States Senate assisting Tennessee senator Howard H. Baker. The Liebengood Papers represent numerous aspects of Baker's work in the Senate, especially those activities involving Liebengood, and contain some of Baker's own correspondence and papers. Included are correspondence, office memoranda, reports, Senate papers, trip material, research items, speeches, campaign material, legislative proposals, notebooks, a few newspaper clippings and photographs, and miscellany. The papers are divided into five series created by Liebengood or his staff, and there is some topical overlap between the various series. Many original folder titles have been retained, and within each series, many folders have been grouped together by subject matter. The series consist of Howard H. Baker Files , Minority Leader's Office Files , Panama Canal Treaties Files , Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Files , Watergate Committee Files , and Classified .
Liebengood left Nashville, Tennessee, and arrived in Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1973 to work as part of the minority staff of the United States Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (commonly known as the Watergate Committee). Baker was the ranking Republican on the committee. Liebengood's responsibilities included interviewing potential witnesses. The Watergate Committee files include a large group of abstracts of interviews and testimony. Baker conducted a special investigation of the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate break-in and related events. Much of the research material from the investigation is included in this series. A number security classified items were removed from this series and placed in the Classified series thatis described at the end of the container list.
After the Watergate hearings, Liebengood returned to private law practice. In 1975 he began working with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, first as a consultant and in 1976 as the minority staff director, a position he held for one year. Intelligence Committee files reflect some of the intelligence and security concerns of the period: the desire to define and restrict the scope of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the renewed investigation into President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and issues such as the Korean influence-buying scandal ("Koreagate") and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II) being negotiated with the Soviet Union.
From March 1977 until January 1981, Liebengood served as Baker's legislative counsel in the minority leader's office . His papers for this period are the most numerous and wide-ranging in the collection. There are large sections on legislative proposals, nominations and appointments, Senate committees and Senate Republican groups, and official trips. Also included are sections on various issues that arose during President Jimmy Carter's administration, such as the Abscam bribery scandal, the scandal concerning his brother Billy Carter's ties to Libya, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II.
Papers relating to the Panama Canal treaties have been separated from the Minority Leader's Office Files and placed in a separate series. The Senate debated the Panama Canal treaties in 1977-1978, and Baker was a central figure during the deliberations and final acceptance of the treaties. It was perhaps because of Baker's leadership that the treaties were ratified in 1978. Republican responses to the Panama Canal treaties reveal a split in the party between moderates who supported Baker and conservatives, such as Ronald Reagan, who felt that Baker had cooperated in a Panama Canal "give-away."