Word: petersen
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...considered it my responsibility to see that the Watergate investigation did not impinge adversely upon the national security area. For example, on April 18, 1973, when I learned that Hunt was to be questioned by the U.S. Attorney, I directed Assistant Attorney General [Henry] Petersen to pursue every issue involving Watergate but to confine his investigation to Watergate and related matters and to stay out of national security matters...
...insist that Nixon twice objected to telling Judge Byrne about the Hunt involvement in this burglary until he was persuaded by Kleindienst and Petersen that he must...
Inevitably, there have been some strange interconnections. John Mitchell, for example, has hired William Hundley, a respected specialist in criminal law who is also a weekly golfing partner and close friend of Henry Petersen, the Assistant Attorney General who has had the responsibility for the Watergate investigation. The fact that Petersen was also an especially valued aide to Mitchell when he was Attorney General does not help to clear the muddy waters...
Scold. Yet Petersen was compromised in the original investigation, ordering Gray to confine its scope to gathering evidence only on the actual wiretapping. Petersen also restricted the department's prosecutors in the trial of two of the arrested men. That led Federal Judge John J. Sirica to scold them severely for asserting that the men on trial had acted wholly on their...
Another case raises questions about Petersen's performance. On March 6, at Petersen's direction, the FBI discontinued its wiretaps and electronic bugs, installed with court approval, that uncovered a Mafia scheme to harvest payoffs and kickbacks from the multimillion-dollar welfare funds of the Teamsters Union, which has become Nixon's closest political ally in organized labor. In a decision protested by department officials, Petersen ruled that there was "insufficient" cause to continue the wiretaps. His edict stopped the eavesdropping after FBI agents discovered that Los Angeles gangsters seeking to tap the union welfare fund...