Word: sirica
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Watergate prosecutors, brought the White House tapes and documents out of hiding. For these deeds, and as a symbol of the American judiciary's insistence on the priority of law throughout the sordid Watergate saga of 1973, TIME'S Man of the Year is Federal Judge John Joseph Sirica...
...against the widespread abuse of Executive power exemplified by Watergate, Sirica's performance was particularly reassuring as a testimony to the integrity of the institution he represents. Of proudly humble origins and with no pretensions to legal erudition, Sirica, at 69, culminated his career only a year from retirement as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. He had from the outset no ambition other than to do his job in the Watergate cases: find the truth, see that justice was done...
...sheepishly revealed another problem with the tapes: 18 minutes of a Nixon conversation with Chief of Staff Haldeman?the only part of the recording about Watergate?had been obliterated by a mysterious overriding hum. Again, Sirica ordered public hearings on this curious dwindling of the tapes evidence...
...record" button on the machine ?and thereby erasing perhaps five minutes (but not 18) of the taped conversation. Asked in Perry Mason-style by Jill Wine Volner, an Assistant Special Prosecutor, to re-enact this, Miss Woods reached for the imaginary phone?and lifted her left foot. Sirica ordered all the tapes to be examined by a panel of technical experts for "any evidence of tampering...
While the technicians continued their studies?an undertaking Sirica described as potentially "most important and conclusive"?he and his young law clerk, Todd Christofferson, listened to the tapes through headphones in a jury room. Sirica upheld claims of Executive privilege or irrelevance on all or parts of three tapes, turning five over to the new Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and the grand jury. Although constricted, the tapes still were expected to be helpful in determining who had been more truthful, Nixon or Dean...