Word: sirica
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Scientific Scrutiny. As the President's attorneys finally delivered some of those subpoenaed tapes to Federal Judge John J. Sirica, a new phase began in the legal controversy over whether Nixon was innocent of any knowledge of the wiretapping of Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, and of the many efforts of his closest aides to conceal the higher origins of that crime. Now the critical question of whether a cover-up might even still be in progress can be subjected to scientific scrutiny. Technical experts disagree on their proficiency at detecting tape alterations. But they very likely...
...Judge Sirica's court last week, Miss Woods testified that she must have been responsible for at least 4½ minutes of a raspy, overriding hum on the tape of a talk between Nixon and H.R. Haldeman, then his Chief of Staff, on June 20, 1972, just three days after the Watergate burglary. Archibald Cox, the fired Watergate special prosecutor, had asked for the tape last July 23, contending that "the inference is almost irresistible" that Haldeman and former Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman had reported to Nixon on that day whatever they knew about the Watergate wiretapping operation. Further, said...
...especially embarrassing to the White House, since it was the fourth recording promised to the court that now is claimed to be either wholly nonexistent or partly inaudible. Moreover, this tape is the same one about which Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, had testified in Sirica's court three weeks ago. She said she had spent 31½ hours trying to transcribe the conversation. While she mentioned various troublesome sounds, including bomblike noises when the President put his feet on his desk near a hidden microphone, she made no mention of such a large segment...
...Sirica announced that a six-man panel of electronic experts, agreed on jointly by the White House and the prosecutors, will make physical and electrical studies of the tapes when they are turned over to the court. The panel will not actually listen to the recordings, however; and it will work at an uncommonly leisurely pace, reporting their preliminary findings in January...
...last week, they faced the attack of a brash and bright lawyer named Richard Ben-Veniste, who, at the age of 30, is the main courtroom performer for the staff of the Special Prosecutor for Watergate. After hearing that the tape was indecipherable, Ben-Veniste urged Judge John J. Sirica to take custody of all the presidential tapes in question to ensure their "integrity" - a request that the judge promptly granted...