The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“REMEMBERING ROBERT MORGAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S5246-S5248 on Sept. 6, 2016.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REMEMBERING ROBERT MORGAN
Mr. BURR. Mr. President, former U.S. Senator Robert Morgan of North Carolina passed away on July 16, 2016, after a lifetime of public service. Senator Morgan served as a State senator, State attorney general, U.S. Senator, and director of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. He was a man of integrity who was well respected by our citizens. Senator Morgan was devoted to doing all he could to make his community, his State, and his Nation a better place for everyone. He will certainly be missed by his family and all who knew him.
At the request of Caroll Legget, the former chief of staff to former U.S. Senator Robert Morgan, I ask unanimous consent that an obituary from the News & Observer published from July 18 to July 20, 2016, and the entirety of two editorials from the July 18, 2016, edition of the New York Times and from the July 20, 2016, edition of the Washington Post be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Robert Burren Morgan, former Attorney General of North Carolina, United States Senator and a prominent figure in North Carolina politics for a half century, died Saturday, July 16, at his home in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Morgan, 90, was born on October 5, 1925, near Lillington in Harnett County. He was the son of James Harvey Morgan and Alice Butts Morgan.
Morgan attended Lillington public schools and earned a degree from East Carolina University. He graduated from the Wake Forest University School of Law. While still a student at Wake Forest, he filed as a candidate for the office of Clerk of Court of Harnett County and was elected, serving from 1950-1954. This launched Morgan's political career. He was a Democrat and a populist and throughout his life he championed the causes of working people and gave voice to their concerns and aspirations.
Morgan established a successful law practice in Lillington and became known as a skilled trial attorney specializing in personal injury, criminal defense, real property law and anti-trust. In 1955, he was elected to the North Carolina Senate and rose to its highest office, President Pro, Tempore. He served until 1968 when he was elected Attorney General of North Carolina. Four years later he was reelected.
As Attorney General, Morgan established one of the nation's first consumer protection offices and was a tenacious advocate for North Carolina residents before the State Utilities Commission that sets rates paid for electric power. He was responsible for the passage of the ``Little FTC Act'' that made unfair and deceptive trade practices unlawful in North Carolina. He reorganized the Attorney General's office and hired outstanding young law graduates and practicing attorneys, two of whom later became Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. He also hired the first African-American lawyer to serve in the Attorney General's office.
Morgan believed strongly that law enforcement officers should receive professional training and persuaded the North Carolina General Assembly to establish a law enforcement training academy and to adopt standards for officers. He revamped the State Bureau of Investigation, which was then in the Justice Department, and after his service in the United States Senate served as Director of the SBI for several years. His landmark achievements as Attorney General of North Carolina and the leadership he provided for the National Association of Attorneys General was recognized by his peers who presented him the Wyman Memorial Award, naming him the Outstanding Attorney General in the United States.
Morgan ran for and was elected to the United States Senate seat previously held by Senator Sam J. Ervin. Morgan was a close friend of former Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey who came to North Carolina and keynoted his campaign kickoff event in Buies Creek.
He was a master of the legislative process, and the experience he obtained in the North Carolina State Senate served him well in the United States Senate. He held prestigious committee assignments that included Banking, Armed Services, Public Works and Select Intelligence. His expertise in the area of anti-trust was immediately recognized by his colleagues, and he was tapped by the leadership to lead the floor debate along with former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy that resulted in the passage of landmark federal anti-trust legislation that had languished in the US Senate for years.
While a member of the U.S. Senate, Morgan was appointed by Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, chaired by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He served faithfully and with distinction and subsequently was appointed to the National Portrait Gallery Commission. He remained a Regent Emeritus of the Smithsonian and continued to be active therein until his health began to fail.
Morgan was a fierce advocate for his alma mater, East Carolina University, and served as chairman of its board of trustees. He led the battle for university status for East Carolina and the effort to establish its medical school. East Carolina recognized his outstanding leadership and devotion by conferring upon him an honorary degree; presenting him with the Jarvis Medal, the University's highest service award; naming him Outstanding Alumnus; and presenting him with its Alumni Service Award.
Morgan returned to the practice of law in 1991, opening a law office in Raleigh and Lillington with his two daughters. There he lovingly shared with them, not only his knowledge, but also his commitment to the justice that the law should provide. Trying cases with his daughters was one of the most meaningful gifts that he gave them. He continued to practice law into his 80s.
From 2000 to 2003, Morgan served as founding president of the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, a Raleigh-based nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that seeks to increase civic engagement in North Carolina. He persuaded his friend Senator John McCain of Arizona and later candidate for President, to come to Raleigh and make the organization's kickoff speech. Morgan had a life-long interest in issues related to persons with disabilities and also was an advocate for environmental causes.
He had a distinguished military career. He enlisted in the United States Navy and graduated from Midshipman's School shortly before the end of WWII, serving from 1944-1946. He was recalled during the Korean Conflict serving from 1952-1955. He remained in the Navy Reserve through 1971, advancing to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He served in the United States Air Force Reserve from 1971-1973, retiring as Lieutenant Colonel.
Robert Morgan was a lifelong Baptist and served on the Board of Deacons of Memorial Baptist Church in Buies Creek and as Chair of the North Carolina Baptist Retirement Homes Foundation.
Robert Morgan is survived by his wife, the former Katie Earle Owen of Roseboro and three children: Margaret Holmes and husband Edward of Chapel Hill and grandchildren Grace and Robert; Mary Morgan of Raleigh and granddaughter Elizabeth Morgan Reeves; and Rupert Tart and wife Valerie of Angier and granddaughters Emma Jayne Crews, and Heather Tart Schaffer and her husband Davey. Surviving nieces and nephews are Mary Lou Matthews and husband Billy Ray, Nancy Morgan Brady, and Larry Morgan and wife, Nancy. He had two sisters and a brother who predeceased him: Lucille Morgan Byrd, Esther Morgan, and Melvin Morgan. He was also predeceased by his daughter, Alice Jean Morgan.
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Robert B. Morgan, Senator Undone by His Panama Canal Votes, Dies at 90
Robert B. Morgan, a former United States senator from North Carolina whose votes for treaties to turn the Panama Canal over to Panama in 1978 cost him his seat after only one term, died on Saturday at his home in Buies Creek, N.C. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by Carroll Leggett, his former chief of staff.
Mr. Morgan was a moderate Democrat whose Senate voting record was ranked higher by the American Conservative Union than by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. But his votes on the Panama Canal were his undoing. As he sought re-election in 1980, his Republican challenger, John P. East, attacked him on the issue throughout the campaign, largely through television commercials.
Mr. East's campaign was run by allies of Senator Jesse Helms, the state's senior Republican and an intense foe of giving up the canal, and the attacks were sometimes personal. In one ad, Mr. Helms questioned Mr. Morgan's Christian faith.
Mr. East's victory, by only 10,401 votes out of more than 900,000 cast, was one of at least five Senate elections that turned on the issue of the Panama Canal and helped give President Ronald Reagan the first Republican majority in the Senate since 1955 as he entered office, having turned back Jimmy Carter's bid for re-election. The Republican votes in the Senate were a critical element in Mr. Reagan's legislative successes.
While many senators required wooing by President Carter before they would back the treaties, Mr. Morgan did not. He had been to the Canal Zone in 1976 and believed a change in control was essential lest the canal be possibly sabotaged or attacked. When Mr. Carter called him in August 1977 to ask him not to oppose the treaties until they could be explained to the public, Mr. Morgan surprised the president by telling him that he was already in favor of them.
One treaty gave the canal to Panama through a series of steps concluding in 1999. The other asserted that the canal would remain neutral in perpetuity and authorized the United States to intervene if that neutrality was threatened--a provision to calm fears of a takeover by China or some other hostile power.
By the time they came to votes in March and April 1978, Mr. Morgan had no doubt that the treaties would be unpopular in his state. He said he had received 60,000 pieces of mail about the canal, only 3,000 backing the treaties. But he did not expect the issue to defeat him.
The treaties passed, 68 to 32, only one vote more than the two-thirds required for the Senate to approve treaties.
In an interview for this obituary in 2010, Mr. Morgan said he was sure his decision to back the treaties was the correct one. ``I think if I had not done it, there wouldn't be a Panama Canal,'' he said.
Robert Burren Morgan was born on Oct. 5, 1925, in Lillington, N.C., where he lived all his life. He was drafted into the wartime Navy in 1944 during his sophomore year at East Carolina Teachers College in Greenville, N.C., now East Carolina University. He was recalled to duty in the Korean War and saw combat as an officer on the aircraft carrier Valley Forge.
On leaving the Navy, he practiced law and served in the State Senate for 14 years before being elected state attorney general, a post he held from 1969 to 1974.
As attorney general, he took a strong role in furthering consumer protections, creating a law enforcement training academy and expanding the State Bureau of Investigations. After he left the United States Senate, he headed the investigations bureau from 1985 to 1992.
He also led the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, which campaigned for public financing in the election of appellate judges. When the proposal became law in 2002, Mr. Morgan said that ``judges will no longer be forced to raise money like politicians'' and praised the legislature for acting ``to make sure that money and politics have no place in a court of law.''
Before the Panama Canal issue, the most controversial aspect of Mr. Morgan's career was his role as campaign manager for I. Beverly Lake, who ran for governor of North Carolina in 1960 as the most segregationist candidate in a field of candidates who all opposed school integration--as anyone who wanted to be elected did then, when very few blacks voted.
``At that time,'' Mr. Morgan said in 2010, ``nobody was integrating.''
He said he had taken the position of campaign manager because Mr. Lake, a professor, had been a beloved mentor in law school.
Mr. Morgan is survived by his wife, the former Katie Earle Owen, whom he married in 1960; two daughters, Margaret Morgan Holmes and Mary Morgan; a foster son, Rupert C. Tart Jr.; and five grandchildren.
Some of the personal attacks of the 1980 campaign rankled him, especially the role of Mr. Helms, whom Mr. Morgan had not campaigned against in 1978 during Mr. Helms's own reelection run. Mr. Helms said in a television commercial that the election of Mr. East, a Methodist, was necessary so that the state would be represented by ``a real Christian.''
In the spring of 1978, Mr. Morgan, an active Baptist, had urged his coreligionists to remain true to their commitment to separation of church and state and not to invoke religion
``on matters on which reasonable men may differ.''
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Robert Morgan, Senator Who Cast Crucial Votes for Panama Canal
Treaties, Dies at 90
Robert B. Morgan, a North Carolina Democrat who was a freshman U.S. senator when he cast crucial votes in favor of treaties that transferred control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government, a decision that brought a swift end to his Senate career but which he stood by all his life, died July 16 at his home in Buies Creek, N.C. He was 90.
The cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease, said his former Senate chief of staff, Carroll Leggett.
Mr. Morgan practiced law and ascended the ranks of North Carolina politics before his election to the U.S. Senate in 1974. He served in the North Carolina state Senate, including a stint as president pro tempore, from 1955 to 1969 and later was state attorney general, developing a reputation as a hard-charging activist for consumer rights.
In the U.S. Senate, he assumed the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr. (D), who was rocketed to national attention as chairman of the Senate committee that investigated the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration.
Mr. Morgan accumulated a voting record that ``defies ideological labels,'' according to the Almanac of American Politics. He was liberal on some issues but conservative on others, and he gained his greatest prominence on the matter of the Panama Canal.
The canal and surrounding area, a critical waterway that connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, had been controlled by the United States since 1903, an arrangement that by the 1970s had caused increasing friction with the Panamanians
President Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976, became persuaded that authority over the canal should reside with the Panamanian government. Opponents of his position regarded any treaty to that effect as a ``giveaway.''
Mr. Morgan was initially among those opponents. He changed his position after visiting Panama as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meeting with the CIA contingent there and with Panamanian leaders.
``Our relationship with Panama on the future of the canal is a festering sore and affects our relations not only with Latin America but with the rest of the world,'' the News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C., quoted Mr. Morgan as saying in a 1977 speech. ``Our global position as world leader and a moral standard bearer is seriously weakened by maintaining this vestige of colonialism.''
Two treaties were hammered out, one establishing the right of the U.S. military to defend the canal's neutrality and the other giving control of the canal to Panama by 1999.
Together, Mr. Morgan argued in comments reported by the Charlotte Observer, the treaties would ``allow us to maintain our vital interests in that country while allowing the Panamanians the dignity and benefit of living on their own land a fact which we would surely insist upon in our part of the United States. It is just plain right to do so.''
The treaties were signed in 1977 but faced withering opposition led in part by North Carolina's senior senator, Jesse Helms (R). In 1978, the Senate ratified the treaties by a margin of 68 to 32--just one vote more than the minimum required.
In 1980, Mr. Morgan was challenged by a relatively unknown law professor, Republican John P. East, who attracted the support of Helms's political machine. In his campaign, East told voters that Mr. Morgan had ``voted to give your Panama Canal away.''
In one of many television ads targeting the Democrat, Helms asserted that ``what we need is a real American in the Senate. A real Christian in the U.S. Senate.''
``Nothing was said about me not being a real American or a real Christian,'' Mr. Morgan told People magazine after his defeat, ``but it was certainly obvious what Helms meant.''
Mr. Morgan lost the race by roughly 10,000 votes.
Robert Burren Morgan, a son of farmers, was born Oct. 5, 1925, in Lillington, N.C.
He served in the Navy before receiving a bachelor's degree from what is now East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., in 1947 and a law degree from Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1950.
He returned to the Navy to serve in the Korean War and remained in the Navy Reserve until 1971, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. He later served in the Air Force Reserve, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
In 1960, Mr. Morgan managed the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of I. Beverly Lake, a staunch segregationist, who lost his bid for the Democratic nomination to Terry Sanford, a more progressive politician who was elected governor that year. Lake had been Mr. Morgan's professor at Wake Forest.
After his Senate tenure, Mr. Morgan ran the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, an organization that worked on campaign finance issues.
Mr. Morgan's daughter Alice Jean Morgan died in 1967. Survivors include his wife of 55 years, the former Katie Earle Owen of Buies Creek; two daughters, Mary Morgan of Raleigh, N.C., and Margaret Morgan Holmes of Chapel Hill, N.C.; a foster son, Rupert Tart of Angier, N.C.; and five grandchildren.
``I made a lot of decisions, and some cost me politically, cost me dearly,'' Mr. Morgan told the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer in 2012, looking back in particular on his votes on the Panama Canal treaties. ``But they were decisions I made with a clear conscience.''
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