Word: sirica
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...ordeal of testifying was finally over for Watergate Conspirator John Dean, who stuck steadily to his story under the often clashing cross-examination of lawyers for the defendants in the Watergate cover-up trial. But the travail had barely begun for Federal Judge John J. Sirica and the 21 lawyers locked in the multisided legal struggle. Already, tempers were turning testy. Frequently, the drama centered more on the extraordinary exchanges among the judge and counsel than on the fate of the five defendants...
...appropriately bizarre way to begin the final phase of Watergate. After the opening statements, Federal Judge John J. Sirica's Washington courtroom was eerily silent for up to 100 minutes at a time. Muff-sized earphones clamped on their heads, judge, jury, defendants and spectators alike were transported by tape recording into former President Richard Nixon's Oval Office. They heard Nixon curse and connive with his top aides to conceal the truth of Watergate from all others, including his own Justice Department. Reproduced publicly for the first tune, the ghostly voices, disembodied but all too real, conveyed...
...fleeting smile enlivened the face of a woman juror. Titters rippled through the courtroom when Charles Colson, an imprisoned former Nixon aide, was heard telling Convicted Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt not to get too specific about why he wanted hush money. "This is a serious matter," the stern Sirica scolded. "Serious to the defendants ... serious to me. There will be no more laughter...
...Thus Mardian, former head of the Justice Department's Internal Security Division, was misled by Mitchell. "Mardian was as pure as a driven snow," Bress argued. "He is dragged in at the tail end of an extensive conspiracy indictment simply because of suspicion." That brought a warning from Sirica that "you are going a little bit too far"; Mardian, after all, had been charged by a grand jury. Parkinson's lawyer, Jacob Stein, also contended that Mitchell and Mardian had deceptively led Nixon's re-election-campaign counsel into a peripheral role in the scandal...
...public during that period-although he managed to paint the prevarication white. The President recounted how he had learned from Haig on Aug. 1 about the presidential tape of June 23, 1972 that, under the Supreme Court's decision, was soon to go to Federal Judge John Sirica for use in the conspiracy trial of Nixon's former aides...