Word: plead
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else if it'll save it-save the plan. That's the whole point . . . We're going to protect our people...
Like Ehrlichman, the other three conspirators had been stripped of a plausible defense because they could not plead national security. In an eloquent final argument for Barker and Martinez, Attorney Daniel Schultz portrayed them as "little men" who had been victimized by their cynical and sophisticated superiors in Washington. They had been led to believe that they were acting on the highest patriotic principles. Countered Merrill: "People cannot be allowed to violate the law because they are told it is right. That's not patriotism. It's anarchy-the beginning of a police state...
...after Nixon claims that he first learned about the cover-up from John Dean and was moving to "get the truth fully brought out," the President told former Attorney General John Mitchell: "I don't give a shit what happens. I want you to [unintelligible] stonewall it, plead the Fifth Amendment . . . even up to this point, the whole theory has been containment, as you know, John . . . that's the thing I was concerned with-we're going to protect our people, if we can." None of those directions appears in the White House transcripts...
...controversial bargain was the one struck by former Attorney General Kleindienst. He faced a charge of having lied at his Senate confirmation hearing when he denied that he had been subjected to presidential pressure in the ITT case. But instead of being tried for perjury, he was allowed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor of having "refused to answer" certain questions. Many outside legal experts were astonished that Federal Judge George L. Hart Jr. accepted that strained version of Kleindienst's act. They were even more surprised when the judge handed down a soft sentence: the statutory minimum...
Former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst-the first Cabinet alumnus since 1929 to be convicted of a crime -stood solemnly before Federal Judge George L. Hart Jr. in Washington. In an unusually lenient deal with Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Kleindienst had been allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of having failed to testify fully at his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now he was to be sentenced...