A Word on Words; 0132; Judge John Sirica

. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. early in his book. As a once obscure federal district judge, he's obscure no longer. He's Judge John Jay Sareka, a man who's courage and conviction and commitment to the law rescued

our country in a time of constitutional crisis. Judge, I know those words embarrass you welcome to word on words. Thank you for inviting me. Judge Sareka's book is one that is being read all across the country. It's a bestseller. It's called to set the record straight. Judge, you say in your book that you began in life as a man of person of modest means. The son of an Italian immigrant and that's sometimes looking back on it, you really can't believe how it all turned out. I know that there are great ironies that move you as you think about what happened to you when you found yourself involved as the judge in the Watergate crisis. The first question is, and many people ask it, as chief judge of the court, why did you assign that case to yourself? The reason I did it was this,

politics was my hobby. I used to like the campaign for the Republican Party when I was practicing lawyer. I was in four national campaigns, beginning with the land in the Knox campaign, the Wilkie campaign. I did some work for Governor Dewey when he was running against President Truman 48, and I wasn't two Eisenhower Nixon campaigns. So I thought I knew a little bit about politics. When I first started to read about the break-in of the Democratic National Committee by the seven men that were involved, the first thing occurred to me that, well, it looks like there's some politics in this thing. I couldn't picture a man like McCord who was head of the security enforcement. I've gotten this title now at the committee to re-elect the president. What's he doing in the Democratic National Committee? You said many people think burglary is for money, and this is obviously what it was. Why did I sign a case to myself? As Chief Judge of the United States District Court at that

time, I had the right and due to duty under our rules. We had 15 judges on the court, including myself. So I could have assigned it to any one of those 14 judges. I've got thinking about this. I had been in two nationally known sensational big cover-up cases, one in St. Louis, commonly known as the Union Electric of Missouri Slush Fund case. That was a case in which the executive vice president was charged with perjury in connection with an SEC investigation. Then you had the FCC cover-up. Then I was appointed by the chairman of the House Select Committee to investigate the Federal Communications Commission. Another very sensational investigation back in 1944 involved those television stations. That's right. I was putting on a case known as WMCA case on the largest independent stations in New York. The evidence in that case indicated, at least to me at least, and

I was counsel of the committee, that there was a cover-up going on there involving some of the most prominent people in the country. I don't think it's necessary to mention that name. No, it is necessary to point out though that because it was a cover-up you quit. You did not know you thought that was going on. I came to the conclusion that the committee, the majority of the committee, were whitewashing this investigation. I felt that if I went along with that arrangement, people could point to me for the rest of my life. Well, Sareka was a party to cover-up in a whitewash. I said, no, I have a duty to perform. I had those two experiences behind me, plus having prosecuted hundreds of cases when I was assisting in the United States attorney, having defended a lot of people accused of crime. So I think those experiences gave me the instinct. Did it ever occur to you that because you were a Republican and because of the people who were being charged, we're trying to get into the Democratic National Committee and

that the money came from the committee to re-elect the president, President Nixon, ever occurred to you that some people would say or think Sareka picked himself because he is a Republican. He wants to take care of this administration. Yes, let me say, first, preface my remark by saying, I never felt the slightest bit of pressure. Nobody with a Republican background ever came to me and asked me to do something that I shouldn't have done. But I did have that in the back of my mind because I talked to four judges on my court and it was a consensus of opinion of those fine, objective, dedicated judges that I should take the case because they knew I had had this political background. They knew about these investigations. I had been involved in. I'm sure they knew it. And after considering the whole matter, I said, well, this is a Republican mess. If I point some judge with a Democratic background, then the crime might go up all, well, the Democrats are trying to get even with them. So I appointed myself to try the case.

I've never regretted it. If I had to do it all over again, I would have done the same thing. I think that all of our audience would agree that you might the right choice, but I know that at the time, and you write about this in the book, there were criticisms. Some people said, well, Sarikas too soft. Others said, Sarikas too conservative. Some said, Sarikas too tough. I suppose a judge is a human being. And one thing that emerges from reading your book is that you don't pretend to be anything except a human with human reactions. You get mad. You resent things that happen to you. You respond in a very natural way. I suppose every judge does. Maybe most of them don't talk about it. But you write about the sting that a judge feels when there's public criticism of his record or his conduct, or even a suggestion about how he might conduct himself. And I suppose that that touches not just

you, but also members of your family. Tell us a little bit about that, because I think every judge everywhere must feel some of that at some time, if you have to try that case. The first of all, as you know, Watergate was a highly emotional case. People would take sides, either they were against what I was trying to disclose or uncover, trying to find out what the truth was, or they thought I should have done it in a different way. And it was a highly emotional case. It isn't like the average case you get where the most likely secondary part. Well, naturally, I would read the accounts and what they would say about me, some members of the media, and I did for a time, frankly, get a little sensitive and a little hurt because, first of all, I knew some of the things I had read were not the truth. I was not that kind of a guy to use an old expression. I was trying to do an objective fair job getting the truth out, and incidentally, I was vindicated. I thought

100% when the Liddy opinion was written by my 11th all, and I think I'd devote three and a half pages to where he said that I did these things in the highest tradition of the federal judiciary, and if anyone reads that opinion, I think would come to the same conclusion I have, that that was a clear vindication. Well, let me just read one line from it because I'm proud of it, and I think all Americans should be said, Judge Cerica's palpable search for the truth. Palatable search for the truth in such a trial was not only permissible, it was in the highest tradition of his office as a federal judge, and that's high praise. Indeed, coming from the appellate court that is considered by many to be the little Supreme Court of the Land. I would certainly agree, as I know anybody who's familiar with the case with the vindication was there, but I really think that you didn't need an opinion to

vindicate what you did. The truth was the acts of the defendants, and one man, the president, who was not the defendant, made it perfectly clear as time went on that you were on the right track when the very start. I suppose the first real touch of controversy and confrontation came during the first trial. The stonewalling was going on then in your court room with defendants, Liddy, McCord, Hunt, and the actual burglars who went in. That was going on that early, and you knew it. You sensed it was going on, didn't you? I sensed that there was something going on that I didn't have any control, at least on that time. I didn't know who were involved. Of course, I always presided in a case, having in mind the presumption of innocence that each defendant is entitled to. I never closed

my mind. I was too well. They were guilty and not guilty, but I knew and felt that there was something going on that was not coming out in my court room. That's exactly how I felt. As a result of that, you took a step that some judges might have considered inappropriate, some might have considered it too activist. As we know, the Supreme Court of Appeals and subsequently the Supreme Court validated everything that you did. But you did ask some questions out of the presence of the jury that sought to get the bottom of what had really happened. The money had been paid to these people. It had come out of the Committee to Reelect the President. People active in the Committee to Reelect the President, McGrude, Sloan, Porter. Others had touched the money and the activity. You were demanding of them at that point. Look, what really happened? What was your involvement? What did you do? Why did this happen

this way? Did you ever have misgivings about that, about going beyond the traditional role that many people see for the judge and asking those deeper questions? Never had any misgivings. I, first of all, many, many years ago, as I said in the book, it was my ambition to become a federal judge. The principle reason was because of the independence the judges have. I'm talking about the lifetime appointment, tenure. We're not controlled by any particular party one way or the other. All you have to do to be a fair and honest judge is to do what you think is right. When I saw the parade walking by me in my courtroom and the parties for some reason, maybe because of ignorance, maybe because of naivety and so forth, I said, Sir Ricko, look, this is your last chance. If you sit up here like a so-called nincapoop that I've used that expression again, like a fool, ruling just on

objections and so forth motions and motions to strike and things like that, and you don't start asking a few questions in here. You've heard the testimony. I'm saying this to myself now, my subjective thinking. You've heard the testimony where Mr. Sloan from the committee to re-elect the president, turns over $199,000 in $100 bills to let it. That was a testimony. Nobody's trying to find out who approved that money and it occurred to me, I was a member of the Republican National Finance Committee during one of the campaigns. Republicans don't have that kind of money that they can throw $199,000 if somebody's hands without somebody approving it. Let me just say- I do. Let me just interrupt here to ask that when you say nobody was asking questions and for whatever reason perhaps it was naivety to set the record straight, you were talking there among others about Earl Silver, the district, the prosecuting attorney in your court, you say in the book

you're convinced that he listened too much to the Justice Department to John Mitchell to others over there and that he was naive about it. You don't impute any bad motives to you. I don't say he was naive. First of all, I like, I think the man is honest. I think he tried to do what he thought was right. I'm not imputing anything to Mr. Mitchell of Miss Peter's Nanny Bay, but I knew from my experience as a prosecutor. So you have to also, when you're a prosecutor, figure out what's the other fall inside of this case, put yourself in this position. I knew that he either was naive about what was going on or believing a lot of these people without naming them. I didn't know who they were and one day he came in the moral office. I think I mentioned this in the book. A bottom administrative matter wasn't very important so we were just getting ready to try the break in case. Now I said, Earl, look, you've got a great opportunity in this trial to do something for the country and the courts. And then I said, I want you to take this volume five of the

hearings before the House Select Committee to investigate the FCC. That was the hearing that you resigned because you didn't like that cover up years because there was a cover up and a whiteboard. I would like you to read what I said to the committee when I resigned and read the testimony. What happened in those days? He took it. He came back and said, Judge, it was very interesting. I read it. Just if you feel any pressure coming, I might have even mentioned to him come see me or something like that. I'm not positive about that. So I figured, well, maybe he's naive about politics. Maybe he's believed these people that have been testifying to testify for the grand jury. So I made up my mind then and then, then and there, rather. I had to do something. I didn't feel that the jury was getting the full story. It didn't make any difference to me whether these defendants were acquitted or convicted. I felt that as a judge, I had the right and a duty under the circumstances. We've never had a case like this that I can remember.

I sent the jury out down to the jury rule and then I took over the question that he must have flown and incidentally, Sloan came out pretty clean in the long run. It was found out later that he was not criminally responsible and he wisely got out when he saw what was coming. Exactly. You say in the book, if you'd ask those questions of Magruta, it might have turned out differently, but no regrets look in that comment. The court of appeals mentioned the irony. Yes. I didn't, of course, I didn't have the benefit of knowing what Magruta said for the grand jury. And of course, Mr. I suppose I assume that they're also having heard Magruta for the grand jury. Thank you, Harold. A vouch for his credibility. They had every right to believe him. Yes. So I started asking questions from the bench. Out of the presence of the jury, so it wouldn't harm the defendants. I think the record shows I asked 42, 142, sorry, I've tried that. 42 questions. It seemed like 42,000, but there weren't. Yes. Looking back on it. That's right. So I asked those questions, which

could have stirred a lot of controversy and criticism in the country. So called great libertarian, thought I was doing the improper things. And I started to be stamped as what we call an activist judge. So I have made the statement many times and speeches I made around the country on this particular point when it would come up. I said, well, if an activist judge is a judge who sits up there and wants to see the justices done between the parties and is searching for the truth, which is what I was doing. And I never made any excuse about it. Then I plead guilty to be in an activist judge. What's wrong with that? And the rest is history. All you have to do is read the opinion. That's right. Well, what we really were talking about here was the greatest cover-up of the most significant white call of crime in the history of the country. And had you not asked those 42 questions or some of them, it is well that history might be that history would have been recorded

otherwise. It might have gone down in history as a third-rate, second-story job. Well, the result was that some pleaded guilty, some stonewalled, litty sat there and smirk. As you say, it got under your skin to see him sit there in court room and smile. And at times you would let him know that you didn't like his conduct. Time goes on. You put off the sentencing because you want to give him a little time to think about it. You know there's something there and it may come out. But as time gets close, nobody's forthcoming. And then there is suddenly a break. One day you're in your office, you walk out into the influence way. One of your clerks is standing there having a conversation with one of the defendants, McCord. You, one of the high moments of the book, one of the really dramatic moments of the book, is how you react to that. Tell us. Well, I remember that day and I shall never forget it. I think as long as I live, it was probably one of the most dramatic moments I think of the whole experience we had in Watergate.

I was in the church sleeves in my office. It was about one o'clock, I guess. I think I had had lunch. And I wanted to say something in my secretary, in my next room, the reception room there. And I walked out there and here was a chap by the name of Azzaro, Richard Azzaro, one of my law clerks talking with McCord, one of the defendants who had been convicted and who was sentenced. I probably was working on that day. I had made up my mind here, what sentence to impose. And I nodded to which didn't come in something like that to my room. And I said something like this. What the hell is going on out there? And talking to McCord, I said we have a rule as you probably know that we don't talk to defendants. I talked to their lawyers and the probation officer. He said, well, Judge, he just came in here before he walked in the room or something like that and he has a letter, a number of white envelope. I saw the envelope. He said he wants to talk with you first. You don't want to give you this envelope. Well, the first thing flashed through my mind, suppose I'm being set up here.

Suppose he's got, say, $10,000 and he's $100 bills. That would be a floating around like worthless coupons. Suppose there are half a dozen FBI men down the hallway going to pounce in on me. These things are going through my mind because I've heard of these things happening in other cases. And then it looks like I'm accepting a bribe. I said, wait a minute. You tell Mr. McCord, if he wants to give a letter to me, go downstairs to the probation, his probation officer. It turned out he was on a vacation or something. And then the probation officer will bring it up to me, don't you see? And I would have a very good background of how I got it. So he did that. In the meantime, I said, well, I'm going to call the prosecutors in and I'm going to put all this on the record in camera. That means all the presence of everybody else. I didn't have the slightest idea of what was in the letter. So the probation officer came up. I got my report of their courtroom reporter. I pledged my two law clerks to secrecy.

And I said, well, I better have the prosecutors here when I open this letter and read it. So Earl Silbert came up at my request and Harold Titus, U.S. Attorney. And I told them on the record that I received a letter and how I received it when I did. And I think they very wisely said, one of the two said, well, judge, maybe we shouldn't be here while you're opening the letter. His lawyer is not here or something like that. I said, well, maybe you're right to myself. They were worried about what the lawyer is called the next part. That's right. They didn't know out of the presence of the defense lawyers on the other side. If I had been in their position, I think I'd have done a substantially same thing. I said, well, would your mind waiting out in a reception role? So they went out. So I opened the letter. And one, the first letter was, didn't wasn't very important. They had something to do with something was in the New York Times. But as I started to read the second letter, which is the one that I think would go down the history. And that was the letter that McCord had addressed to you personally.

Personally. And I started to read it. And my God, I couldn't wait until I could talk to my law clerk. And I was so happy I said to myself, my God, this is what I've been waiting for. Somebody is going to break in this case. I'd told a clerk that many times. I said, Todd, this case is going to be broken open because I feel somebody will talk. And that's usually how these cases are made. Somebody starts talking, let's see. Yes. Either one of the defendants or a secretary or something. All right. And when I went out, when I learned that this letter was telling me, in effect, there were other people involved in this case. Other than the people that were found guilty, I said, oh, my God, I said, and I looked at the date on the letter. It was March the 19th, 1973, which happened to be my birthday. Happy birthday. And I said, this is the best birthday present I've ever gotten in my life. And later I told Todd, I said, Todd, this letter is going to break this case wide open. You watch what I tell you.

And from the time, I said, now what I'm going to do with the letter. And how did I read it in the record? In the presence of the reporter, the two law clerks. And I think that's about all the prosecutors on the right side. And I said, well, I'm glad I didn't read it while the prosecutors were here. Not that they'd have done anything. Let me propose here. Let me interpose here. It seems to me that one of the things that is fascinating about the letter was the statement contained in it by McCord that he was afraid to talk to anybody else. He knew that the Justice Department was over the FBI. And he was not going to talk to anybody that might report back to the Justice Department. I'm sure in retrospect, he's glad he did exactly what he did. Well, you then took the letter into open court. And again, what comes through is your commitment to put everything on the record that the public and the government should know. You go in and you read that letter from McCord.

And as you say, the case broke wide open. All hell broke loose at that point. No. Well, that's, as you know, what happened in the course, after I read the letter, all the members of the media rushed out. We got to the telephones and the word got out. This was after you're ready to open court. That was on March 23, 1973. Now on March 26, three days letter, later. I received an envelope about as large as this. It had, it was on the station area of the United States Attorney, not on the Attorney General's printing there. I could never figure out why he didn't send me the letter by a messenger in the envelope with Attorney General of the United States on there. He probably wanted to show the U.S. Attorney that he was backing them up. Yes. So he got the U.S. Attorney's Office to deliver the letter. So I read the letter. It's in my book for beta. It was a letter that was critical of me, of the way I handle them, a court letter. Much as I say, why didn't you turn it over to the government? Now, they claim they had investigated this matter thoroughly.

They'd use, I guess, hundreds of agents on it. And I said to myself, nobody's going to know about that letter if I can help it, other than the people in this room, when I read it, into the record, my reporter and law clerk. I'm going to break it and open court, give nobody a chance to hear about it until it breaks in that courtroom, which it did. And I got angry when I read that letter. I knew him. I let him from climbing. Yeah, I call him Dick and he called me by the first name, and we were, I thought, good friends. And the letter was critical of me, and the letter is in there for a beta-week book. It's critical of you for reading the courts letter and opening it. In other words, I should have turned the letter over to him or somebody else, but frankly, if I had done that, I don't know what would have happened to the letter. Beyond that, it would have really, would it not have been a betrayal of McCord's worst fears? Of course it was. The McCord anticipated that I might not do what he was hoping to do, although to this day, I've never talked to McCord, other than maybe in the courtroom. McCord had given a copy of that letter to Bob Jackson of the Los Angeles Times, with the understanding that if I didn't do what I did, apparently,

read it in the open court. Bob Jackson told me, he said, you beat me out of a big scoop judge. I was going to publicize in our paper. You remember that part? Oh, I do indeed. Well, luckily, maybe divine providence was guiding me or something with guiding me to do what I did. And after it was all over then, as you know what happened, the rest of his history had hit all the papers and the radio TV. From the moment that letter went public, so to speak. Dean got worried, apparently. He started coming in talking within a month, let's say, or so. McCruder started coming in and dicturing or talking with prosecutors. Everything started to happen. Yes. Let's just see. Well, that letter from McCord was no doubt a watershed. It shook the White House. It shook the administration. It shook the Department of Justice. But it didn't shake you and it didn't shake your court. You continued to conduct the business of that court in the same way,

seeking always what Judge Leventhal and that opinion called that palpable search for the truth. You're still seeking the truth. As you once said to the jury, you're looking for truth, TRUTH. That's just the way you said it. Let me move ahead of the story now a little bit, because it seems to me that we then come to the next point of major crisis. And that was almost a constitutional crisis. It would have been if Richard Nixon had not backed down. But a field discloses there are tapes. From that point on, it was important for you to get access to those tapes. Archibald Cox is a special prosecutor. He's conducting his own investigation by this time. He wants those tapes. He comes to you and asks for a subpoena for the tapes. At one point, another dramatic point, he asks you,

he tells you that the grand jury has really given him the authority to confront the White House. You call in this grand jury in a very moving moment. You pull the grand jury and ask them, common citizens, some of them very poor, is it there wish to confront the president on this vital matter of justice? And they all support that point of view. And so, you sign it and the confrontation begins. Now, the tapes were important to the White House at that point. They had to keep them undercover if they were going to survive. There is a supreme irony. The fact that you had voted for Richard Nixon really campaigned for him for Vice President and he ran with President Eisenhower 52. You voted for him in 58, 68. You voted for him in 52, and then you voted for him for President in 68. And again in 72, and now the man you voted for and had supported,

you're sitting listening to his voice on the tapes. It's another moving moment when you recite just how you felt about it. It was depressing, punishing for you, I know. Well, it was. I mean, I think that's putting it mildly, frankly. Because I've always respected Mr. Nixon. I realize that what the situation was. But that particular day, you see, we received the first batch of tapes. I think there were nine. When the court appealed to the firm, my order of auditing the president turned over the nine tapes. We hadn't listened to them yet. So we listened to these tapes in the jury room. The very jury room in which the jury decided the fate of the break-in case defendants and the cover-up defense. It was, we were listening to the March 21st tape. March 21st tape. Dean was talking to the president.

And it was so plain to me that the president was involved in this cover-up. From that conversation I heard going on. Yes. And it was pretty clear of exceptions, I remember it. We had these little earphones on, you know, connected with the Euro there, the tape recording. Yes, I remember very well. And we were both very quiet. Having in mind, going through my mind, this is the man I campaigned for. This is the man I was telling the American people about the corruption and government when President Truman was running against Tom Dewey and all that. The rhetoric that you know we used to use sincerely too. This is the man that now I find out is lions and American people lying. I just couldn't believe it. When we finished the tape, I wrote out on the note to my law clerk. I said, Todd, let's play this over again. I wanted to be sure I was hearing what I was hearing. Did they, let you see?

Yes, you say so in the book, but the profanity. And you had come, you'd come up the hard way in life and there was nothing on there that was new. That's right. But there was something about it that bothered you. It bothered me. Yes, I never thought first of all to use that kind of language. I didn't condemn it before, but I said, oh my God, this is not the picture of the man that I admired so much. I had met him about six times, socially, never talked to him over half a minute or a minute. And I just put him up on a pedestal. But what bothered me so much, the thought came through my mind. I think I got it in the book. The whole thing could have been avoided, John, so easily. That's the thing. I immediately thought about the incident where President Eisenhower, when Sherman Adams, former governor of New Hampshire or Vermont, I think, he was found to have accepted one of the Vaikuna coats on this. Yes.

And Mr. Eisenhower said, word to him, I think, Mr. Nixon had a part in it. He had to go. Why Mr. Nixon didn't say to Hallamond on June the 20th, it's on that tape. When he first learned about the break-in, which was only three days ago. Three days later, why didn't he say, as I said in the book, Bob or look, Mr. Hallam or Hallamond, I want the names of all these people by tonight. These people who are involved in this terrible thing that's happened. And I want their resignations by tonight, and I'm going to ask for time tomorrow night, get on TV and tell the American people what's happened. He'd have gone down as one of the greatest presidents we ever had, because he was on sound ground on his foreign policy. But you know, the American people, John, they despise liars. They can't stand people who lie. This was not like the teapot dome case, where dishonest cabinet officers accepted $100,000 in cash, bribe from a very wealthy oil man.

This was a different kind of man. This was a case, greed for power, arrogance, going to run things the way they wanted to run it, going to get rid of even with enemies, while I could go on. And the book is a clear and penetrating account of just how that greed for power and that arrogance took hold of the government and really warped the opinions of many good men. Good, decent young men you recite in there but these bright, able, articulate young men came in before you and testified. It walked all their ideas for a period. It was almost judged as I read the book. It seems to me they were almost captive of the need to keep him in office. And as you say, the real problem was

that he simply did not have the character of President Eisenhower. Quote, from the book now, his reluctance to give up the tapes created a constitutional crisis. And you had this argument before you on whether the tapes would be surrendered. On one hand, you had a great lawyer named Archibald Cox. And Cox was taking the position that he was that the President of the United States was not above the law where criminal conduct was concerned. You had the Bur case, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson had that same confrontation with John Marshall. And you had that as a precedent. The Marshall had said, if the case is serious enough you must give him up, but that crisis was averted because Jefferson capitulated. He voluntarily surrendered some of the documents. Now here you've got the same situation, one 84 years later, and it's not John Marshall,

but it's the Reika. React to that a little bit. I knew that this was going to be the first time since the Aaron Burr case. That we were going to have a direct confrontation. That is, the federal judiciary was faced with a situation where a judge and happened to be me was going to probably have to tell the President the most powerful man in the world at the time that he had to do certain things. I knew it was coming, I knew it was coming, and after listening to brilliant arguments on both sides. Cox on one side. I tried on a light on behalf of Nixon. And they both conceded that this would be the first time that a judge was called upon to make this kind of a decision. So, I was going to have a little vacation down over the beach for a few days or a couple of weeks maybe. I got down there and I couldn't sleep at night's a course worrying about the type of pinion I was going to get out. But I made up my mind the next day after the argument what I was going to do. I thought Mr. Cox was right. And of course, the appellate courts have backed this up on that.

I thought he was right that no man was above the law and not even the President of the United States. And I took that position. I wrote the opinion, I think, within a week. And I said to myself many times, you know, Sir Ricker, to myself, I said, this is a momentous decision you're going to make. Probably the most important you've ever made in your life. And the thought occurred to me many times. Well, luckily it turned out that I was right according to the appellate. Suppose I guess wrong. Suppose I had gone ahead and written this opinion and it had backed fired. What would the millions of people say in the country about me? This was running through my mind. This was the risk or chance I had to take. They would probably say, well, he was a grandstander. He shouldn't have done that. He was trying to ridicule the President. Embarrass this and that. I could see the other side of this. You tell in the book about walking out on the ground where John Marshall had lived.

You work. Your courthouse is a place where John Marshall dies a whole square now. That's right. It was not there in those days, but he is home from what my search of the history book, his home apparently was located on that site somewhere. He may have written the opinion from that site. You may have been searching for a spirit a little bit when you were out there walking around this way. Well, here I am. I meet with John Marshall, one of the greatest chief chusses we ever had. It's a record, an unknown judge, so forth. You better be very careful about this. I was careful. I feel that I did the right thing. I was supported by the appellate courts. But it was quite a feeling. I don't know if you could put yourself in my position, but I realized the importance of the decision. And naturally, I'm happy that I made it. I think it's great for the country. We've lived through it. So that's how I feel about it. Look, then the president had his own idea

about how he was going to comply with your audit to surrender the tapes. His idea about it was that what he would do is just prepare a little summary for you. And he'd submit that to you. The president announces that this is his decision. He's saying all along. Look, there are national security secrets on those tapes. Mr. Wright makes that argument before you. He's saying, I'm not really doing this. I'm doing it for future presidents who may be charged with responsibility to do this. Mr. Wright says, if the president does this, 400 other judges who are in this country practicing or presiding over federal courts may require him to do it. You say no. He's not above the law. This is the case Marshall was writing about when he said, if it's important enough, and it is important enough, he must surrender the tapes. Nixon's response is to create up, create his own idea about how it should be handled. Not to let you have the tapes in camera. Let's finish reading. And that made you a little bit mad.

You were prepared when you came into court. You were prepared when you came into court to deal with a situation because you didn't think they would surrender the tapes. Mr. Wright appeared before you that afternoon. He surprised you didn't. Yes, he did. Yeah. He surprised me. I think he surprised millions of other people too. The president capitulated. He capitulated in court, open court. That's true. Wright says, we're surrendering these tapes to you. How did you feel about it? You were prepared, weren't you, to go the limit to hold the president of the United States in contempt. Yeah. The first time I think that would have ever happened and I realized that too. I was up in Fairfield, Connecticut on that Saturday night. The Saturday night massacre. Yeah. Of course it was on TV and I followed it. And I understand the members of the media were ringing my phone off to hook literally right up by me. I suppose they asked me what's going to happen, which I didn't know then. I followed on TV and when I saw the Mr. Cox, what they did, Mr. Cox, the arrogance, the meanness, the contempt, the way they handled,

the way they took care of that great American, who I think is one of the outstanding lawyers in the country because he wouldn't go along with them. They fired them. They, the president fired them. Two outstanding Americans, Attorney General Mitchell wouldn't go along. Neither would Rucklehouse go along. They were right. Elliott Richardson. Well, naturally I followed all that. And frankly, when I came back to Washington, I got in, I guess, on a Monday. This was the day before Mr. Wright was to peer my court. And I was literally seething. I was angry. I knew I was going to do something. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I finally figured to myself, what am I going to do to force him to turn these tapes over? We'd come to this point. That's the confrontation. I had prepared for I went on the bench that Tuesday morning, a short order with which an effect said the president of the United States will be in my court room the next morning to show cause why he shouldn't be fine for contempt of court, something like that. I was ready if he came in the next morning,

which he didn't of course. I was ready and I had two figures in mind because I don't think I could have committed them to jail because I doubt that the country could have stood it in the first place, second place. I don't know how many marshals I'd have to have to go up there and defeat all those secret service people. But anyway, I said the best way to handle him in order to coerce him, coerce him into turning the tapes over because I had the backing of the Court of Appeals. I remember this case, John L. Lewis, United Neim, mine workers. He had two finds and pulls against him one time just to be in order to court 10,001, I think, in 20,000 days. The best thing to do is to hit Mr. Nixon in his pocketbook where it's going to hurt. And I've got one find, the lowest would be $25,000 for every day that he wouldn't have turned the tapes over or the maximum might be $50,000. I had those two figures. But I wanted to see what his attitude was going to be the next morning. Now, the book really reveals for the first time

that you were prepared to go that far. That you considered jail and you said, well, I really can't do that. He is the president and I can't put the president in jail and what I'm really looking for are the tapes. And if I punish him financially, I'll have a good chance of getting him to surrender the tapes. Of course, that was not necessary because Mr. Wright came in the next day and translated and said, we surrender the tapes and you may study them in camera. And as a result of that, you then sit with your clerk for all those hours, listening to the president in the time surrounding the break-in and afterward, plotting, conniving, maneuvering, manipulating, stonewalling, and urging others to stonewall, in effect lying, violating the law, obstructing justice. And as a result of all that great sense of sadness, you came to feel a great sense of sadness. Sure. I felt no sadness for him, frankly,

but for his family, lovely wife and children, embarrassment, what they must have been going through and I don't suppose that they knew the whole story, frankly, I don't know, never talked to them. And there was a sense of sadness to think of a man who had written who fought so hard during his life to get someplace, comes president to permit a little silly thing like this to ruin his life. And as you say, he could have assaulted himself. You know, you say in the book that while you did have those emotions, you also feel that the pardon was a mistake. It allowed him to put himself once again, one step beyond the law. He didn't have to get indicted. He didn't have to face trial. How do you feel about the pardon? Well, in the beginning, when President Ford pardoned, Mr. Nixon, I felt, then, frankly, that maybe he did the right thing, but the country probably had enough of Watergate. The country was in sort of a turmoil,

and maybe it'd be better to get it behind us. But as I started to reflect on the whole picture, when I had more time and everything became common and all that business. And having posed jail sentences on several of these defendants, several of them were disbarred, as you know. They lost their so-called reputation, the ones that I had to sentence. I've come to a conclusion that there are millions of people in this country and probably right, to think there's two standards of justice in this country. One, for the man who rises high enough in power, prestige or money, and one for the little guy that doesn't have any friends, don't you see? And that worries me yet. And this is one of the things I cannot get out of my mind. We look at the fairness of it. What do these people in jail behind bars think now? Say you're serving 10 years. And they see the President of the United States lie

and he did this and that. And I'm struck to judge it. And I'm struck to judge it. Which is a criminal act? Do they think that there's justice because he lost his presidency or his office? Do they think this is fair? I don't think it's fair. I think that it would have been better for our country, frankly, if the grand jury felt they had enough evidence to indict him. After he resigned and if the pardon had not been granted, of course, the granting of the pardon did away with that eventuality. But assuming the pardon was not granted, and if the grand jury had indicted them, then no matter how long it would have taken a year, two, three, four years, if he were brought to trial on an indictment with the presumption of innocence, I would have liked to see lawyers like John Wilson and Huntley and Tom Green and all of those. I'd like to see you get him on that stand. Then we'd have the true story on the oath of what happened. As it was, he in effect did get away with something.

He was not treated John like the others were treated in case. That's my opinion. Let me take you right into the courtroom for the major case now. This is the case of the attorney former attorney general, John Mitchell, Bob Holderman, John Erlichman, and the others. The major defendants as it turned out. The prosecutor is James Neal. You used to call yourself an obscure lawyer. I suppose any lawyer from Tennessee is considered obscure. You have great admiration for Neal. Well, you know, I've been a student of what I call jury psychology. A lot of people must do it in say, teach a course, a trial practice, George Sound, and they would say, well, judge, what do you mean by jury psychology? I'm referring to lawyers now. Yes. Joe, he knew that case so well, Jim Neal. He literally put himself in that jury box in arguing that case of the jury. He could picture or feel,

get the feel of what each jury was thinking about, about the evidence, don't you see? He related his arguments to the evidence. And literally, he was what you might call a 13th juror in that box, trying to guide them to a just decision. And John, I've heard hundreds of arguments for prosecutors, defense lawyers, some of the best lawyers in the country I've been in cases with. And I never heard an argument, frankly, that was better than this one. I've heard great arguments, but that argument of people take the trouble to read the record will go down in history as one of the great, great arguments. John, Jim Neal, of course, I'm a little bit prejudiced, I guess, because he made such a great impression upon me. He was fair. He was objective. He was calm. He was not vindictive. He wasn't mean. He had master. He was a master, what I call jury psychology. The ability to think as a juror to argue reasonable things

and equate it to the evidence. He did a great job. Yes. Other people have said you were the right judge and the right place, the right case, the right time. I think that's true. And it probably was never more true than when your old friend John Wilson, who knows you so well, and knows you to be a man of passion and temper. When he and his colleagues began occasionally to bait you, you came to think that they were trying to incite you to say something that might be judged in the Supreme Court as reversible error. He Wilson talked about his error bag that you were making errors and he was keeping him in his bag. At one point you called him up and told him you knew what they were doing. How do they react to that? I think I talked to them off to record at the bench there. Well, for about two weeks I think this kept up and John and I, of course, are still the best of friends.

John Wilson, we're all the ones loyal to that. Paul, we're talking to Paul. He's an excellent lawyer. He and I had a joining officer when we were young prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office. And I've had this happen before and I don't hold this against him. I sure he didn't hold anything against me. But I felt that they were creating some kind of an atmosphere in the courtroom there and not illegally, of course. These are lawyers' tactics, you know. Whereby I would get to lose my temper. I have been known to lose control over the times and I would say something to do something that would cause a mistrial. That was my impression of what was going on. So one day I think I'd call them to the bench and I think off of the record. I don't think I put this on the fish. I said, now look, follows there's something like that. Prosecutors were up there too. I said, I know what you're doing here. You're trying to make me lose my temper. So I'll declare a mistrial. But if that's what you're looking for, it's not going to happen. Because I will keep a mental note.

I'll remember what was done. And at the end of this case, you'll have to suffer the consequences. And I knew that they knew what I meant. That means that I would have done exactly what Madonna did up in New York when he tried that case involving 8-10 Communist Party members and all. He put those lawyers in jail right after the jury verdict. And I would have imposed probably a jail sentence on one or more of these lawyers that I thought were doing that. And I didn't have any more trouble after that, don't you see? Yes. And they knew I meant business. Now that comes back to the duty of a judge in a courtroom. A trial judge must have complete control of his courtroom from the time you walk on that bench. It's like a captain on the ship. And you must run it with dignity, the carum, but you must not let it get out of control. And I learned that many years ago. The most damning evidence in the whole case, I suppose the most damning evidence was the tapes. But beyond that was the testimony of John Dean.

And I remember early in the book, when Dean testified before the Urban Committee, you had thought maybe he was making a lot of self-serving declarations. Ultimately, the tapes proved that he was not. That he was stating it just the way it was. What's your impression of him? You sat there in the courtroom and listened to him for days and days and days. Recite from memory. He was attacked on cross-examination. He was serving time himself after pleading guilty at that. What's your impression of John Dean? Well, all I can do is relate what I have observed in courtroom. I've never talked to him. I don't believe I've ever done pretty sure other than maybe when I took his plea in the courtroom. But outside of that, I think what happened probably to him was maybe this. And this is just a theory, not based on a fact. He saw himself getting into a situation as he probably wrote about in his book plan ambition.

He saw him getting into a situation where maybe he felt he might be coming in the scapegoat or one of the scapegoats. And he elected to tell what he thought was the truth about this whole picture. If he told the truth, and that's the amount of the jury had to decide, obviously they must have believed him because he read a 245 page statement I think before that senate committee. And then that was before the tapes were even discovered. And later, as you know, the tapes corroborated him in many details, don't you see? So apparently he was a credible witness. Apparently the jury must have believed some were all of his testimony. Now, I don't think about the man's morals or anything like that. And I don't think I want to comment upon that. I just believe that I'll have to stop with what I've said in the courtroom. I do believe that there was a certain amount of credibility that is believability on the part of the jury as to his testimony because it was corroborated by the tapes. He, I guess, is the best example of

lives bright young men who were crushed and destroyed by this tragedy called Watergate. You yourself suffered not just personal criticism of great anguish emotionally. And as it turned out, great physical pain as a result of this. You tell in the book about the day you were on the bench, reading an opinion of some substantial significance, you literally had to go outside and after you delivered it. And I think that was a record letter because I got this, the pain. I was appreciating pain in my chest here and I thought I was getting a heart attack or severe case of indigestion. And I didn't think I could finish the letter. I finished reading it and I did finish the letter and then I said, let's take a 20 minute recess.

I went into my chambers, stretched out on the sofa. Harry Kelly came in with Chicago Tribune or New Chicago Tribune, I think. Chicago Tribune, yeah. Thomas and came in from the script's Howard anyway. So about a half hour I arrested and it sort of drifted away went away. I went back and finished what I had to do. Yeah, I'll never forget that experience. Subsequently, you did suffer a heart attack and during the course of the case you could have stepped out at any time. Why didn't you? Well, I thought that I owed something to the courts, John, to the American people. Here I was in this case from the beginning. It was a very difficult matter. For some other judge maybe to step in, I could have assigned it in the beginning to somebody else but I didn't feel that I should do it for the reasons I've already given. And I could have stepped out after the break-in trial. I didn't have to try the part involving

Miss Rosemary was 18 and a half minute gap part of the case. I didn't have to try the cover-up case. But I felt that it would be sort of running away from something that I ought to see through because I was familiar with the background of the case and I didn't want to impose upon some other judge to take it over. So I think that I'd have to say that I think I owed it to the courts, I owed it to the country to complete the job which I think I started there. Anybody who reads your book and I hope everyone within the sound of my voice does will come to, because it is a history lesson, will come to know how you feel about Richard Nixon but you might just tell us now. What are you thinking about? Even though I feel very sorry for the man, I really do because of the reasons I've already given. I'm not vindictive, I'm not looking for revenge or anything like that.

I wish it had happened the other way that where he was not involved in this thing from the beginning, but that's history now. We can't do anything about that. So I still have the deepest feeling of sorrow for him and particularly his family, but we can't forget what happened. And that's another reason that I wrote this book for historical purposes. You see, a lot of people, I think the word will be spread if it hasn't already been spread around. That President Nixon, I believe, would like the public to know the youngsters coming along 25, 50 years now that the politicians ran him out of the office. That's not so. The politicians did not run him out of office. He resigned, in my opinion, because number one, he knew he was going to be impeached. There was no doubt about that. The evidence was overwhelming against even his own parties, turning the party members, turning against him. Or he knew he was going to be indicted. I probably have to serve some time.

That's the reason he resigned in my opinion. I've said that. I may be wrong. It's just my theory. He was not run out by politicians on either side. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's what history will record. John Sareika has written a book to set the record straight, and that's what it's called. You know, Layton is book he tells about that time when he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. He doesn't really remember the conversation, but a friend who was at his side reports that he said, if I go out, if I go out, I hope that it will be said that I did something for my country. He did something for his country. He saved its constitutional form of Democratic government. Thank you and good night. Judge John J. Sareika, author of to set the record straight, and has been our guest on a word-on-words featuring John Sigmthorn. This program was produced

in the studios of W-E-T-A, Washington, DC.