Word: sirica
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Several natural choices come to mind -the burglars who started it all, the Watergate committee, even (perversely) the President himself-but one name dominates. TIME'S Man of the Year should be Judge John Sirica, who believed in the law enough to seek out the truth, and who has defined "public morality" at a time when a definition was lacking...
Perhaps it was not a bomb, but the pin was soon pulled on a fair-sized hand grenade. Next day, reading nervously from a slip of paper, Special Presidential Counsel Fred Buzhardt told Judge John J. Sirica in a Washington federal courtroom that 18 minutes of conversation on one of those tapes was impossible to hear. It had been mysteriously obscured by an unwavering "audible tone." The President, Buzhardt conceded under questioning, had been told of this before he spoke to the Governors...
...While Sirica scowled at Buzhardt and obviously struggled to conceal his irritation, the President's lawyer claimed that "the phenomena occurs during the course of the conversation-that is, not at the beginning or end"-between Nixon and his former chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, on July 20, 1972. This was just three days after five men were arrested during the wiretap-burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters. It was also after Haldeman and another former aide, John Ehrlichman, had been briefed on the arrests by then Presidential Counsel John Dean...
...court, Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste urged Sirica to take immediate custody of all of the subpoenaed tapes. Buzhardt objected that several conversations not under subpoena were also on the reels containing the desired recordings. Unmoved, Sirica indicated he would order the reels subpoenaed if they were not voluntarily turned over to him by Monday of this week. He added sourly: "This is another instance that convinced the court that it must take steps to safeguard the tapes, to make certain nothing like this happens again between now and when we actually listen to the tapes...
...confident White House lawyers had expected to clear up all doubts in about three hours of testimony. But as the second week of the unusual fact-finding hearings in Federal Judge John J. Sirica's Washington courtroom ended, the astonishing White House claim that two of the President's subpoenaed tapes had never existed remained a matter of controversy. Each time the battery of White House lawyers closed one testimonial gap, a new one opened...