Kyle Knickerbocker of Essex happened to be in southern Maryland taking a licensing exam when he got the word that impeachment hearings would be starting a few days later on Nov. 13 at the nation’s capital.

A history buff and former class president at Valley Regional High School in Deep River, the 28-year-old merchant mariner who started his career as a summer deckhand for Cross Sound Ferry in New London soon began looking into the nuts and bolts of the hearings and found out they would be open to the public.

A quick call to the office of U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, confirmed that he would have just as good a chance as anyone to get into the hearings being conducted by the House Intelligence Committee headed by U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as no member of Congress was handing out passes to the event.

“The timing was good,” Knickerbocker said. “I was planning to go to D.C. anyway.”

After talking to Courtney’s office, whose staff Knickerbocker said was “very helpful,” he hatched a plan a day before the first impeachment witnesses were set to testify to pay a line-stander somewhere between $30 and $40 to show up about 5 a.m. outside the congressional office building where the hearings were being held the next day.

By the time of his arrival about 9:30 a.m., he found himself fifth in line. The doors opened at 10 a.m., and Knickerbocker took a seat at one of the most unusual events in U.S. history: an impeachment hearing for a sitting president of the United States, only the fourth time the House of Representatives has investigated the most powerful man in the country for possible removal from office.

"It surpassed my expectations," Knickerbocker said. "There were times in the hearing when I got chills, and it wasn't because the room was cold."

He also remembered the lighter moments, such as when U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, kept insisting that the whistleblower who complained about Trump's call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky should testify because he or she started the whole impeachment inquiry. To which U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, shot back: "I'd be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify — President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there."

The two diplomats who testified on the first day of impeachment hearings, William Taylor and George Kent, set the stage for some explosive testimony over the past week. 

These included first-hand witnesses to both the call between Trump and Zelensky as well as those who had heard a call between the president and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who testified Wednesday that he believed a "quid pro quo" existed in which Ukraine was expected to announce an investigation into the son of front-running Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in exchange for a meeting with Trump.

Others have testified that they believed nearly $400 million in foreign aid to Ukraine also was being withheld as Trump pressured the country to investigate both the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy theory floated by the Russians that it was Ukraine, not Russia, who meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections. Such investigations, Democrats said, would have hurt Biden's presidential aspirations and improved Trump's chances of re-election.

Each day, the hearings reveal new details in the impeachment probe.

"I follow it daily," Knickerbocker said, "both pre- and post-game analysis."

Yet Knickerbocker, who talked during breaks with fellow hearing-goers from both blue and red states, said little seems to be changing in the court of public opinion as each side clings to their "tribal beliefs."

"When lines are drawn, people stick to their guns," he said.

At the hearing, Knickerbocker said he could see the Republican and Democratic committee members, but not the witnesses, who had their backs turned toward the public. To get a feel for witnesses' expressions, he tried to go on Facebook to live-stream the hearing coverage from his phone, but there was so much of a delay that he found it distracting.

Some hearing attendees brought in snacks, but Knickerbocker didn't want to take the risk of being told to leave, so he demurred. He stayed for the entire testimony, as the committee took only five-minute recesses with no lunch break, he said.

"If you left for the bathroom, you could have been giving up your seat," he said. "I didn't want to take that chance."

Before the hearing, Knickerbocker was interviewed by a reporter from Time magazine, who asked what made him want to attend.

"I just wanted to see for myself," he said. "You can watch something on TV, but you don't pick up on certain things unless you are there."

Knickerbocker, who wouldn't disclose his party affiliation, said one of his main take-aways from the hearings is that, "We need to sit back and watch the process take shape." He suggested that those who try to paint the hearings as boring may not want the public to watch for fear that opinions will change based on the facts and testimony.

Knickerbocker himself is keeping an open mind. He disagrees with some pundits who he said are so reflexively defensive of the president that they seem to have closed their minds to the facts of the case.

"I wouldn't want to find myself in a position where the facts are not disputed but they're still trying to find some defense," he said. "Keep your mind open. Think for yourself."

l.howard@theday.com