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                                                                              ╚January 7, 1974

Man of the Year

Judge John J. Sirica: Standing Firm for the Primacy of Law



    There was little ennobling in the broad shape of human
affairs in 1973. Mankind progressed haltingly, if at all, in its
tortuous quest for greater wisdom in the conduct of
international relations and greater brotherhood among
individuals. The U.S. continued to improve relations with China
and clung to a strained detente with the Soviet Union. But
political sentiments elsewhere still were expressed in the blood
language of terrorist bombs and bullets, from Belfast to Madrid,
Rome to Khartoum. Once more men died in battles on the hot sands
of the Sinai and in the barren Golan Heights. The first freely
elected Marxist leader in the world was killed in a right-wing
rebellion in Chile; a changing of the guardians refurbished
authoritarian rule in Greece. For Americans, the dying finally
ended in the paddyfields and jungles of Viet Nam, but more than
50,000 Vietnamese killed each other after the long-awaited
"peace."

    Yet more than any other event, it was the multifaceted
Watergate affair, the worst political scandal in U.S. history,
that dominated the news in 1973. As it gradually unfolded,
involving more and more areas of President Richard Nixon's
Administration, it revealed a shocking disdain for both the
spirit and letter of the law at the highest levels of
Government. Ultimately, not only the primacy of the rule of law
on which the American system rests but the presidency of Nixon
stood challenged, plunging the U.S. into a grave governmental
crisis. Fittingly, it was the American legal system, which had
trained so many of the malefactors caught in the Watergate web,
that came to the rescue.

    One judge, stubbornly and doggedly pursuing the truth in
his courtroom regardless of its political implications, forced
Watergate into the light of investigative day. One judge,
insisting that not all the panoply of the presidency entitled
Nixon to withhold material evidence from the Watergate
prosecutors, brought the White House tapes and documents out
of hiding. For these deeds, and as a symbol of the America
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.

A Judicial Search for Truth and Justice
    Set against the widespread abuse of Executive power
exemplified by Watergate, Sirica's performance was particularly
reassuring as a testament 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.

    Modest and unimposing in speech and stature out of court,
the 5-ft. 6-in. jurist towered and glowered from his bench,
openly indignant at what he considered evasions and deceptions
in testimony before him. He simply did not believe that the
seven lowly burglars who had wiretapped Democratic National
Committee headquarters at Washington's Watergate complex in
June 1972 were a self-starting team working alone. Injudiciously,
some have argued, but undeniably in the higher national interest,
as others would insist, he applied pressure until he got a
scandal-bursting response. Once James W. McCord Jr. began to
talk, the White House conspiracy to keep Watergate "a third-rate
burglary" came apart at the seams.

    Sirica used his same rugged courtroom common sense to cope
with the challenge of a historic constitutional clash between
branches of Government. Even a President must respond to
subpoenas for evidence in criminal cases, Sirica ruled. Judges,
not the President, must ultimately decide whether claims of
Executive privilege to withhold such evidence are valid.
Presidents, in short, are not above the law. The Circuit Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld him; and in the
end, Nixon gave up, partly because he feared that the Supreme
Court would also see it Sirica's way.

    Other characters in the Watergate drama, most notably the
President, around whom the whole affair revolved, played major
roles. Yet Nixon, to his own detriment, never took charge of
the scandal, continually reacting to events rather than shaping
them. The remarkable Senator Sam Ervin, who rose spectacularly
as a national folk hero in chairing the historic Senate
Watergate hearings, employed literary allusions and unabashed
outrage to effectively belittle the many evasive and amoral
Nixon men who came before him.

    Archibald Cox, the determined Special Prosecutor, refused
to accept a unilateral Nixon "compromise" designed to circumvent
Sirica's orders regarding the presidential tapes, and publicly
protested Nixon's command that he desist from seeking further
presidential evidence. Fired by Nixon, Cox bowed out with a
Brahmin civility that inspired a fire storm of protest at his
dismissal. Former Attorney General Elliot Richardson, too, stood
as a staunch symbol of integrity in the celebrated "Saturday
Night Massacre" by defying the White House decree that he fire
Cox. Richardson resigned instead, further arousing national
indignation.

A Trio of Global Actors
    The Watergate drama in Washington could not, of course,
completely obscure the principal actors elsewhere on the world
stage. Three were particularly notable for their roles during
1973. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat skillfully courted alliances
among Arab leaders, then launched the coordinated Yom Kippur
attack by his armies and those of Syria on Israeli-occupied
territories. Although the strike was ultimately successful, the
fact that the invading armies were not instantly crushed by the
Israelis restored a measure of Arab pride that may help make a
Middle East settlement possible. Saudi Arabia's King Feisal
responded to the urgings of militant Arab leaders and curtailed
oil shipments to nations that the Arabs deemed too friendly with
Israel. The immediate impact was devastating. The long-term
repercussion could prove beneficial, however, as a grim reminder
that industrialized nations have for too long wasted energy and
recklessly failed to develop alternate sources of it.

    Most important of the three men was Henry Kissinger, the
U.S. Secretary of State and presidential advisor. As Nixon was
engulfed by Watergate, Kissinger became, in effect, America's
president for foreign affairs. He ranged the world in a virtuoso
performance of solo diplomacy. He twice toured major capitals
of the Middle East, first to help achieve a cease-fire, then
to complete arrangements for a Geneva conference seeking a long-
range settlement. Twice he flew to Moscow to bolster detente
or ease the Middle East crisis. He also undertook two missions
to China, building on the diplomacy initiated the year before
by Nixon and himself.

    Kissinger played a key role, too, in the year's most
significant foreign policy achievement; the negotiated
withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the nations' debilitating
involvement in the Viet Nam War. However tardy, the settlement
allowed 587 American prisoners of war to return home, the draft
to be suspended and the domestic strife that had inspired a
rebellious counterculture to be eased. It did not, however,
achieve a true peace for Viet Nam itself and at year's end
fighting continued almost unabated.

    Following directly on the shattering U.S. experience in
Viet Nam, it was the turbulent U.S. political crisis that
made some of the world worry about the stability of America and
question its capacity to play a global role. Variously
disbelieving, saddened, sickened and cynical, many Americans,
too, lost faith in leaders who had betrayed their trust. One who
had most blatantly done so was Spiro Agnew, an acerbic apostle
of righteousness who had thrived as Nixon's Vice President on
strident demands for harsh judgements against all who disagreed
with his own rigid concepts of acceptable ideology and
permissible -- but never permissive -- behavior. Then, faced with
overwhelming evidence of his own criminal corruptness and petty
greed in accepting graft from Maryland contractors, Agnew
successively claimed innocence, lashed out at his accusers,
copped a plea on income tax evasion, and quit.

    A Vice President admitting criminal activity was shocking
enough. But with the gradual, string-by-string unraveling of
Watergate, the resulting revelations indicated an astonishing
pervasiveness of corruption among Nixon's political and official
associates. Theirs was a lust for the enhancement of their
leader carried far beyond acceptable limits. That made it all
the more menacing to democracy, if less alarming to those who
insisted that, after all, nothing was stolen and no one was
killed. No fewer than twelve of Nixon's former aides or the
hands they hired were convicted of crimes. Six others, including
two Cabinet members, were indicted. At least seven more Nixon
officials seem certain to be indicted when the three federal
grand juries now at work in Washington complete their tasks. The
total of all those charges with crimes could surpass 30.

    Later trials may absolve some defendants, but the range of
criminal charges against them is appalling. It includes perjury,
burglary, illegal wiretapping, obstruction of justice,
destruction of evidence, fraud, extortion, solicitation of
illegal campaign contributions, violation of campaign funding
laws, subornation of perjury, illegal distribution of campaign
literature, and various forms of conspiracy to commit illegal
acts. No such litany of illegality has ever before been
officially leveled against the associates of any U.S. President.

The Allegations Against the President
    But as the scandal ballooned well beyond a political
burglary and its cover-up, wide-ranging allegations against
Nixon himself became part of the sordid affair. They included
contentions that Nixon had: 1) intervened in an antitrust action
against ITT in return for political contributions; 2) raised
milk support prices and reduced dairy imports for similar
considerations; 3) issued orders leading to the burglary of the
office of Daniel Ellsburg's psychiatrist; 4) offered to appoint
the judge in the Ellsburg case FBI director, as a means of
influencing his decision in the case; 5) ordered or condoned
illegal wiretapping and other "White House horrors" perpetrated
by his self-appointed "plumbers"; 6) obstructed justice by
firing Prosecutor Cox; 7) directed or knew about the
solicitation of illegal campaign contributions from
corporations; 8) misused public funds in improving his
residences in Key Biscayne and San Clemente; 9) failed to pay
his proper share of federal and California income taxes; 10) had
altered or disposed of some presidential Watergate tapes.

    Richard Nixon's culpability is not yet clear, although the
president of almost anything else would have been quickly forced
to resign by a scandal which infected so much of his
organization. Moreover, the strange oscillations in White House
attitudes toward the various investigations raised grave doubts
about Nixon's innocence. First there were blanket denials,
lavish claims of Executive privilege and invocations of national
security. Then came repeated clarifications, previous statements
declared "inoperative," and multiple promises of full
disclosure. Subpoenas were resisted. The persistent Special
Prosecutor was fired. Next a sudden yielding to the courts,
followed by an Operation Candor that was far from candid, claims
that crucial tapes were "nonexistent" and the revelation of a
mysterious flaw in one recording. Observes TIME Washington
Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey: "It all falls into place, it all makes
sense, if one makes a very simple assumption: Nixon is guilty
-- he knew what his men were doing and, indeed, directed them."
Otherwise, it was all irrational behavior -- and that, too would
be frightening in a President. As a result, Nixon, who began the
year as the most decisively re-elected President in U.S.
history, ended it facing demands for his resignation and an
impeachment inquiry by the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives.

    As 1973 began, the Watergate wiretapping was widely
regarded as a mysterious political operation, its origins
unknown and its seriousness unappreciated. Candidate George
McGovern had been unable to stir much interest in it as a
campaign issue. Except for dogged digging by a small segment of
the U.S. press, most notably the Washington Post and TIME, the
entire matter might have faded from public view.

    While the news stories traced some links between the White
House and the electronic eavesdropping on the Democrats, the
Justice Department prepared to handle the case routinely. Henry
Petersen, head of the department's criminal division, assigned
a team of bright but junior prosecutors, including Earl J.
Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald Campbell, to the task. At
Petersen's direction, they showed little zeal for tracing the
source of the funds used by the men arrested at the Watergate
or determining who had authorized the politically motivated
crime.

    The case of the seven original defendants did not look all
that ordinary to Judge Sirica, who had been reading the
newspapers and later told some reporters: "I was only asking
myself the same questions you were." As chief judge of the
District Court, he had the duty to assign the case to one of 15
judges -- and he took it himself. That was partly because he had
a relatively light docket at the time, but also because he felt
that if he as a Republican judge handled the matter, and did so
fairly and aggressively, no charges could be leveled that
partisanship had entered the judicial process.

The Appearance of Justice Must Prevail
    Thus on Jan. 11, ten days before Nixon was inaugurated for
his second term in a mood of festive partying and high spirits,
Sirica presided solemnly in his fifth-floor courtroom in the
beige U.S. Court House and served notice that he regarded the
Watergate burglary as a far from simple matter. E. Howard Hunt
Jr., sometime White House consultant, CIA agent and mystery
novelist, offered to plead guilty to three of the six charges
against him as one of the seven men arrested for the Watergate
wiretapping-burglary. In this case, answered Sirica, the
public would have to be assured that not only "the substance of
justice" but also "the appearance of justice" was preserved.
Also, because "of the apparent strength of the Government's
case" against him, Hunt would have to plead guilty to all six
counts or go to trial for each, Hunt admitted his guilt on all
of them.

    "Don't pull any punches -- you give me straight answers,"
warned Sirica when the four Cuban Americans arrested at the
Watergate pleaded guilty four days later. If anyone else was
involved, Sirica added, "I want to know it and the grand jury
wants to know it." The four insisted that the conspiracy stopped
at the low levels of their arrested leaders: Hunt, G. Gordon
Liddy, another former White House consultant and counsel for
Nixon's 1972 re-election finance committee; and James W. McCord
Jr., a former CIA electronic-eavesdropping expert and security
chief for Nixon's re-election committee. Where did they get the
money to carry out their operation? They did not know. Snapped
Sirica: "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you."

    Sirica was still skeptical when the Government's main
witness, Former FBI Agent Alfred C. Baldwin, admitted at the
trial of Liddy and McCord that he had monitored many of the
conversations of Democrats on a radio receiver in the Howard
Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. But
Baldwin also insisted that he could not recall to whom at the
Nixon re-election committee he had delivered records of the
intercepted talks. "Here you are an FBI agent and you want the
court and jury to believe that you gave [them] to some guard you
hardly knew? Is that your testimony?" asked Sirica. It was
indeed.

    With the jury out of the courtroom, Sirica dismissed as
"ridiculous, frankly" the claim by McCord's attorney, Gerald
Alch, that McCord had helped bug the Democrats in hopes of
detecting plans of radicals for acts of violence against
Republicans during the campaign. If McCord really believed that,
Sirica suggested, he should have called police, the FBI or the
Secret Service. Well, could McCord's defense be based on the
claim that he had no criminal intent? "You may argue it," Sirica
told Alch. "Whether the jury will believe you is another story."

    The jury did not, finding both McCord and Liddy guilty on
Jan. 30 of burglary, wiretapping and attempted bugging. At a
bail hearing for the two conspirators, Sirica urged the
Government's prosecutors to put certain Nixon officials "under
oath in the grand jury room." At least one, former Commerce
Secretary Maurice Stans, had been permitted by the prosecution
to submit a sworn statement to the grand jury in lieu of
testifying. "I am still not satisfied that all of the pertinent
facts have been produced before an American jury," Sirica
declared. He reminded the prosecutors of a list of persons he
wanted them to question again.

    Following judicial routine, Sirica ordered presentencing
investigations for all seven defendants. But going beyond
normal procedure, he let the convicted men know that the
severity of sentences would depend heavily on the degree to
which they cooperated with probation officers and investigators
still probing the Watergate crimes. One potential truth-bearing
forum looming ahead at the time was that of Sam Ervin's Senate
Select Committee. Sirica welcomed the hearings despite the fact
that they could complicate some criminal prosecutions. "Not only
as a judge but as one of millions of Americans who are looking
for certain answers," Sirica said, he hoped the Ervin committee
could "get to the bottom of what happened in this case."

    The combination of the impending hearings, twinges of
conscience, and Sirica's not very veiled hints at severe
sentences was too much for one of the previously uncommunicative
conspirators. On March 20 Sirica stepped out of his chambers
and into his office reception area to find James McCord standing
there with a letter in his hand. A clerk told the startled judge
that McCord wanted to see him privately. Sirica, who never
allows a defendant or convicted individual to approach him
privately before sentencing, quickly retreated into his chambers
and ordered McCord to leave. He said McCord would have to hand
any communication to his probation officer on a lower floor.

    For Sirica, it was an awkward situation. Perhaps McCord was
offering incriminating information on others. But what if the
envelope contained money, and some sinister plot to frame the
judge was under way? Should he have any private dealings at all
with McCord, if only to accept a letter? Should he just turn the
envelope over to Government prosecutors and let them open it?
But what if it contained something McCord did not even want the
prosecutors to know?

    Sirica resolved the matter instinctively, reverting to a
career-long tendency to get everything possible on the official
record. He summoned two law clerks, a court reporter, a bailiff,
and the probation officer with the letter. Sirica would open it
only in their presence, and he would read it immediately into
the record. As he did so, the implications of McCord's message
immediately hit Sirica. "I knew this might throw light on things
we suspected but didn't know," he explained later. "It convinced
me I'd done exactly the right thing in asking all those
questions."

    Three days later, Sirica acted on another of his habits;
when in doubt, make matters public. He read the McCord letter
to a crowded courtroom. McCord had written that he feared
"retaliatory measures against me, my family and my friends,"
said he did not trust the regular investigatory agencies enough
to give them the information but felt he must disclose that: 1)
political pressures from high officials had been "applied to the
defendants to plead guilty and remain silent"; 2) perjury
masking the motivations of the defendants had occurred during
the McCord-Liddy trial; and 3) "others involved in the Watergate
operation were not identified during the trial, when they could
have been by those testifying." After he had read the letter and
watched newsmen rush for telephones, the import struck Sirica
again, almost like a physical blow. He felt pains in his chest,
ordered a recess in the proceedings and retired to his chambers
to rest.

    When McCord again detailed his charges to Government and
Senate investigators, he claimed he had been told that former
Attorney General John Mitchell had approved the Watergate
wiretapping plans, that all the defendants had been given
regular installments of payoff money to keep quiet, that he and
others had been promised Executive clemency in return for their
silence after serving short prison terms, and that this offer
came from the White House. McCord's sources of information were
Liddy and Hunt, making his own testimony hearsay and this
legally inconclusive in a criminal case. But the fact that
McCord was talking broke the conspiracy of silence -- and blew
open the whole scandal.

    Sirica then deferred sentencing McCord. But in the most
controversial act in his entire handling of the Watergate
affair, he also kept the pressure on the other convicted
conspirators to talk too by giving them harsh provisional
sentences ranging up to 40 years. He called their crimes
"sordid, despicable and thoroughly reprehensible." He promised
to review the sentences later and said that the final sentencing
"would depend on your full cooperation with the grand jury and
the Senate Select Committee." Sirica's expressed purpose: "Some
good can and should come from a revelation of sinister conduct
whenever and wherever such conduct exists."

    Solid evidence that the extreme sentences would not be
finally imposed came when Sirica sentenced Liddy, the one
conspirator who apparently intended to live up to the omerta
training of a clandestine agent by stubbornly remaining silent.
Liddy was given a term of from six years and eight months to 20
years. When he was granted immunity against further prosecution
and recalled before the grand jury for questioning about other
conspirators, he still balked -- so Sirica on April 3 gave him
an additional prison term for contempt of court. Frankly
conceding that he was wielding a judicial club, Sirica said that
the aim was "to give meaning and coercive impact to the court's
contempt powers."

    At a higher level, the cover-up was now crumbling. White
House Counsel John Dean had warned Nixon on March 21 that "there
was a cancer growing on the presidency." Dean spirited documents
from his own files out of the White House, put them in a bank
safe-deposit box and gave the keys to Sirica. When the White
House on May 14 asked Sirica to return the Dean documents, the
judge refused. He would keep the originals and give copies to
new Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and the Ervin
committee staff.

    Sirica complied with a Senate committee request by giving
limited immunity against prosecution to Dean and another
suddenly talkative witness, Jeb Stuart Magruder, deputy
director of Nixon's re-election committee. They could still be
prosecuted, but not on the basis of evidence gleaned solely from
their televised testimony. Sirica also flashed a judicial green
light for the hearings to proceed as planned by rejecting a Cox
motion that television and radio coverage of Dean's and
Magruder's testimony be banned. Cox had argued that the wide
publicity could jeopardize future criminal cases against
individuals.

The Parade Before the Ervin Committee
    Throughout much of the summer, the nations attention
shifted from courtroom to caucus room as the familiar Watergate
names turned into unforgettable images on America's television
screens. This was television's greatest contribution yet to
public understanding of a historic and confusing event in
American political history. More than all of the news accounts,
more than the proceedings in Judge Sirica's courtroom, the
Senate Watergate hearings dramatized the issues and
personalities, permitting millions of Americans to make up their
own minds about whom to believe and whom to doubt.

    Some of the once faceless Nixon operatives ruefully
admitted their own guilty roles in the several Watergate
conspiracies. Others unconvincingly denied any participation by
themselves or anyone at the White House. But only the relatively
powerless John Dean, tainted but nevertheless courageous in his
turncoat testimony, made grave accusations of the President's
participation in the cover-up. His chilling tale, conveyed in
a lifeless baritone, was sharply denied by such far more
influential and shrewd Nixon intimates as H.R. Haldeman, John
Ehrlichman and John Mitchell.

    Nixon stood on his earlier claims that he had known nothing
of the wiretapping in advance, never approved clemency for the
defendants, was unaware of the payoffs to them and played no
part in the conspiracy to conceal. Then, dramatically, a means
to break the testimonial impasse was revealed: Alexander
Butterfield, a former White House aide (now head of the F.A.A.),
told the Ervin committee that most of the President's White
House meetings and telephone calls had been secretly recorded.
The Senate committee and Prosecutor Cox promptly issued
subpoenas for key tapes.

    That brought Judge Sirica back on center stage in an
unfamiliar and challenging role. In 16 years on the federal
bench, Sirica had handled a wide gamut of criminal trials and
civil suits, including highly complex antitrust cases. But now
he was being asked to rule on an unprecedented claim by the
Executive Branch that a President is immune from subpoenas
because the courts have no power to enforce any order against
him; that only the impeachment process of Congress can touch
him. Moreover, argued Nixon's legal consultant, University of
Texas Law Professor Charles Alan Wright, Nixon's tapes were
protected by the unwritten doctrine of Executive privilege. Only
the President had the power to decide which of his documents
were so privileged or which might also endanger national
security if made public. At issue, contended Wright, was
"nothing less than the continued existence of the presidency as
a functioning institution."

    Sirica did not agree. In an opinion praised by some legal
scholars as unexpectedly erudite, he wrote that he was
"extremely reluctant to finally stand against a declaration of
the President of the United States on any but the strongest
possible evidence." Nonetheless, he would have to examine the
tapes himself in order to determine whether the President's case
for not yielding them was valid. "In all candor," Sirica said,
"the court fails to perceive any reason for suspending the power
of courts to get evidence and rule on questions of privilege
in criminal matters simply because it is the President of the
United States who holds the evidence" Asked Sirica rhetorically:
"What distinctive quality of the presidency permits its
incumbent to withhold evidence? To argue that the need for
presidential privacy justifies it is not persuasive." As for
impeachment, that could be "the final remedy" in "the most
excessive cases," but "the courts have always enjoyed the good
faith of the Executive Branch." Sirica, in short, would not
expect Nixon to ignore a court order.

White House Turnabout on Giving Up Tapes
    Sirica had the satisfaction of seeing his opinion
essentially upheld by the Circuit Court of Appeals, which
observed: "Though the President is elected by nationwide ballot
and is often said to represent all the people, he does not
embody the nation's sovereignty. He is not above the law's
commands.

    On Oct. 19 Nixon announced that he would not appeal the
case to the Supreme Court. Instead, he would make available a
summary of each of the subpoenaed tapes and would allow Senator
John Stennis of Mississippi to listen to the tapes to see if the
summary was accurate. There was no reason for Prosecutor Cox to
accept that unilateral arrangement, since he had a far better
chance of getting the tapes themselves under Sirica's order. So
Cox objected -- and was fired by Nixon. Declared Cox after he
was ousted: "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of
laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the
American People to decide."

    The clamor of public protest that followed the Cox
dismissal and the virtually simultaneous resignations of
Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General
William Ruckelshaus shocked the White House. At first Counselor
Wright, on the following Tuesday, Oct. 23, was prepared to
argue before Sirica that the Stennis compromise met the thrust
of the Court of Appeals' suggestion that an out-of-court
solution to the tapes impasse be found. But clearly it did not
meet Sirica's order to produce the tapes. Although Sirica will
not say what he intended to do about it, he does admit that he
"was prepared to act." Other judicial sources expected him
eventually to cite the President for contempt of court.
Suddenly, however Nixon changed his mind, ordered Wright to tell
Sirica that he would "fully comply" with the subpoenas for the
tapes. When Wright did so, astonishing almost everyone in
Sirica's courtroom, the clearly incredulous judge smiled broadly
and said, "Mr. Wright, the court is very happy the President has
reached this decision."

    The court was not at all happy, however, when another White
House counsel, J. Fred Buzhardt, informed Sirica on Oct. 30 that
two of the nine subpoenaed tapes were "nonexistent" because
they had never been made. Sirica scowled even more sternly on
Nov. 21 when Buzhardt 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
taped evidence.

    Those unusual fact-finding proceedings produced the bizarre
testimony of Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal
secretary. She said she had inadvertently kept her left foot
on the pedal of a tape recorder while stretching behind her to
answer a telephone call, at the same time mistakenly pushing the
"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 an
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 though 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.

    Convinced that legal processes were well in motion to get
at Watergate truths, Sirica sentenced the long-jailed burglars
to relatively light terms; the minimums ranged from one year to
30 months, much of the time already served. Said Sirica: "I've
given you the lowest minimum I thought justified."

The Argument Over Sirica's Tactics and Conduct
    Despite that outcome, Sirica has been severely criticized
by some legal authorities for using the provisional-sentencing
procedure as a device to get the defendants to cooperate with
investigators. "We must be concerned about a federal judge --
no matter how worthy his motives or how much we may applaud his
results -- using the criminal-sentencing process as a means and
tool for further criminal investigation of others," contends
Chesterfield Smith, president of the American Bar Association.
The association's president-elect, James Fellers of Oklahoma
City, much admires Sirica and his Watergate role but likens the
sentencing tactic to "the torture rack and the Spanish
Inquisition." Argues Law Dean Monroe Freedman of Hofstra
University: "Sirica deserves to be censured for becoming the
prosecutor himself." The University of Chicago's Law Professor
Philip Kurland considers the harsh original sentences "a form
of extortion."

    Sirica defends his action on grounds that no one seriously
expected those severe sentences to be made final and that the
law makes it mandatory that any provisional sentence must be the
maximum possible; he did not have discretion to make it lower.
Moreover, it could be argued that Sirica's efforts to determine
the true motives and origins of the crime were relevant to his
decision on how severely finally to punish the defendants. Yet
it is also true that the men had every legal right to remain
silent and that this particular use of provisional sentencing,
while technically lawful, could infringe on their civil rights.
Sirica, not much given to mulling over law theory, is
unrepentant. To critics of his actions, including his persistent
questioning of defendants from the bench, he has replied: "I'm
glad I did it. If I had to do it over, I would do the same --
and that's the end of that."

    Many of Sirica's colleagues on benches around the country
seem to agree with him. More broadly, his handling of the
Watergate cases is widely seen as a vindication of the legal
system at a time of great stress, Chief Judge David Bazelon, who
heads the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia, which has sometimes reversed Sirica rulings, contends
that Sirica became enraged not because he believed he was being
lied to personally, but because he thought the court was being
lied to. He has humility, which is not a universal virtue among
judges." Former A.B.A. President Bernard Segal calls Sirica "a
shining light. He's shown firmness, understanding and great
integrity." Declares a former partner of Sirica's in the
Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson: "He was the worst judge
the Administration could have had on this case. He's a deep-dyed
Republican who is genuinely outraged at what's happening in the
party that put him on the bench."

    Exposure of wrongdoing is, of course, the first requisite
in achieving justice -- and Sirica deserves the prime credit for
taking those vital initial steps. Whether justice and law in the
end will prevail still depends on the investigation by
Prosecutor Jaworski and his determined staff, the outcome of
numerous individual trials, and what may still be learned --
and done about -- the President's actions in the many Watergate-
related improprieties. Sirica will continue to play a role in
that process since he intends to remain an active judge on the
bench even after he retires as chief judge in March. Early
this year he will issue his ruling on whether the tapes were
tampered with. He may well assign himself one or more of the
major impending Watergate trials.

    The future criminal cases, however, may not answer a key
question: How could so much have suddenly gone so wrong?
Certainly a longtime trend toward an increasingly dominant U.S.
presidency was a factor. In a development beginning with
Franklin Roosevelt, vastly enhanced by the romantic Camelot
atmosphere surrounding John Kennedy, too much authority has been
given by Americans to their Presidents and too much has been
expected of them. Harvard Divinity Professor Harvey Cox goes so
far as to contend that the U.S. public surrounds the Oval Office
with a mystique that approaches "a national quasi-religious
cultism."

    Yet there is something unique in the Nixon character and
the men he chose to aid him that spawned Watergate. Despite his
intention of "returning power to the people," Nixon drew
authority about him like a blanket of insulation -- and waved
it over domineering aides responsible only to himself. Unchecked
by the accountability of Cabinet officers, who must look to the
traditions of their office, answer to congressional committees
and worry about legalities and public opinion, these apparatchik
White House guardians cherished secrecy and told Nixon only what
he wanted to hear.

    The President in turn seemed at ease solely with such
automatic yes men and relatively anonymous associates, but
apparently confided fully not even in them. Yet he shared
powerful prejudices with them, most dangerously a siege
mentality in which so many other vague classifications of
Americans -- liberals, antiwar radicals, academic intellectuals,
Eastern sophisticates, the press -- were seen as enemies, akin
to unfriendly foreign powers. They were to be subverted,
subjected to surveillance and eavesdropping, and "screwed" by
agencies of Government. Nixon's re-election campaign became a
crusade in which any means were seen as justified to keep all
those fearful foes out of power. National security was equated
with Nixon security.

    But how could so many attorneys, trained in concepts of
justice and the rule of law, become involved? Orville H. Schell
Jr., president of the New York City Bar Association, blames this
on a tendency of many lawyers today to forgo their critical
independence and to serve as in-house counsels for corporations,
foundations and Government. Their powerful clients thus become
their bosses; the lawyer's aim is to please, not to advise that
what the boss wants done may be wrong. One law school dean is
less charitable in faulting such a broad trend. He blames Nixon
for hiring "legal midgets -- underclass lawyers. That's why he
was so surprised by the really classy guys like Cox, Richardson
and Ruckleshaus."

    Yet it is the legal profession that has, however belatedly
and at first by a narrow edge, finally become most aroused about
the transgressions against law and the Constitution that make
up the dismal scandal. While the profession has moved forcefully
through such men as Sirica, Cox and Richardson to acquit itself,
it is still on trial, and whether justice will finally prevail
is still in doubt.

No Single Outcome Can Please Everyone
    "We don't have a victory of good, we just have an exposure
of evil," observes Professor Kurland. "Nothing has been
triumphant but cynicism." Stanford Law Professor Anthony
Amsterdam worries whether justice can possibly be done when the
criminal evidence has been held up for so long by those who
might be guilty. "It is as if in a bank robbery all evidence
were given to the robber to hold for two years before trial."

    Certainly if justice is not seen as prevailing by most
Americans in the many trials still to emerge from the affair,
a deepening cynicism and a rootless everybody-does-it syndrome
of irresponsibility for individual acts may be Watergate's more
lasting legacy. Whatever the outcome -- most crucially including
the fairness and thoroughness with which the President's
political fate is resolved -- millions of Americans will still
consider the result wrong. Watergate thus is bound to leave a
lingering bitterness among at least a minority of Americans.

    Yet the nation may well be poised in a fateful fulcrum that
will either tip predominant sentiment toward a new faith in its
fundamental institutions -- including Congress, the Constitution
and the courts -- or send it into a trough of public despair
and anomie. The direction will depend to a large degree upon how
many members of Congress, Government prosecutors, judges, jurors
-- and, indeed, the vast public jury -- try to emulate the
nonpartisan determination and faith of Judge John Sirica, who
insists with simple sincerity that "if the truth just came out,
we'll all be all right."