Word: neal
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...James Neal is "the most vicious prosecutor who ever lived." Neal earned that vitriolic encomium from Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa when he led the Justice Department's effort to convict Hoffa. Now, ten years after Hoffa was found guilty of jury tampering, Neal is the chief trial prosecutor in the Watergate cover-up case. He still treasures the Hoffa remark, but as he prepared to open the Government's case this week, he observed: "I've mellowed a lot since then." A colleague of Neal's agrees -sort of: "He has mellowed a lot. But even...
Blocking Back. In fact, Neal softens his bantam-rooster combativeness with an easy Tennessee drawl and a gentle farm-boy manner. Spectators at the cover-up trial will not see the showmanship of an F. Lee Bailey or the suave assurance of a James St. Clair. A former Marine captain and star blocking back at the University of Wyoming, Neal is not even especially eloquent. His strength is the sine qua non of all great trial lawyers: preparation. During the past months, he has often put in ten-hour days with a single Watergate wit ness, then worked on into...
Dean will probably be Neal's first witness, and may be on the stand as long as two weeks. Next will come corroboration from various former Nixon men and, for the finale, the tapes. It is one of the strongest cases, as well as the most important, Neal has ever handled. Ironically, he did his best to avoid the assignment. When Archibald Cox became Watergate special prosecutor, the Harvard professor was worried about his own lack of trial experience. Remembering Neal from their time together under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Cox telephoned Neal hi Nashville...
When Cox called in May 1973, Neal's private law practice was beginning to prosper. The son of a farm family of modest means, Neal had a comfortable life. His small farm boasted a tennis court, and he had enough leisure to use it and to spend time with his wife and two children. He told...
...persisted, and Neal finally agreed to come to Washington for two weeks just to help get the office started. He stayed nearly five months, after deciding that Dean was the key to the case and that it was critical to get his guilty plea and his cooperation. On Oct. 19 Neal went to court to hear Dean plead, then announced his own resignation. His assistants, Richard Ben-Veniste, 31, and Jill Wine Volner, 31, performed admirably in the many and complex preliminary hearings in John Sirica's courtroom. Still, as a prosecution staffer observed, "for the biggest trial...