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Loyalty or Legality in Obedience: Note on the Watergate Proceedings

Reviewing his pioneer research designed to "learn under what conditions submission to authority is most roba able, and under what conditions defiance is brought to the fore," Milgram (1965) concluded that, "If in this study an anonymous experimenter could successfully command adults to subdue a fifty-year-old man, and force on him painful electric shocks against his protests, one can only wonder what government, with its vastly greater authority and prestige, can command of its subjects. There is, of course, the extremely important question of whether malevolent political institutions could or would arise in American society." The transcript of the Senate Watergate hearings may ultimately provide a unique and compelling empirical contribution to the formulation of a social psychological theory of situations (cf. Milgram, 1965). For example, in his testimony of May 21, J. W. McCord, a veteran of distinguished federal service, specifically stated that his participation in the break-in was prompted primarily by his belief that the operation had been sanctioned by both the Attorney General and (indirectly) by the President. Similarly, J. Caulfield testified that he obeyed orders to offer McCord executive clemency because it was his belief that he "was doing a great service for the President of the United States." B. Barker and A. Baldwin also testified that they believed that they were involved in a matter of national security. These witnesses shared a professional law enforcement background and as such were probably aware that their actions were illegal. Not withstanding any unstated motivations for personal gain or situational demands, their obedience seemed to be prompted by loyalty to the person making the request. Just as these witnesses had to resolve conflicts in their social field so the persons in Milgram's studies did too; and just as explicit statements in the hearings revealed loyalty to be a major motivational factor, so Milgram observed that "on arrival, the subiect is oriented primarily to the experimenter rather than the victim." Important questions raised by this analysis concern delineating the conditions in which loyalty takes precedence over legality and the conditions in which personal interest takes precedence over loyalty (the latter notion suggested by McCord's subsequent defiance of instructions to plead guilty). It may be years before the entire obedience hierarchy in the Watergate affair is established, but unfolding events seem to provide a source of valuable behavioral data against which prevailing theory concerning the areas of obedience, moral judgment, and post-transgression guilt could be re-examined, and future research could appropriately be designed.