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- MILESTONES, Page 17
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- DIED. John Sirica, 88, the federal judge whose insistence on
- learning the truth in the Watergate scandal brought down
- Richard Nixon's presidency; in Washington. Sirica, a Republican
- appointee, presided over the Watergate cases for five years,
- from the break-in at the Democratic National Committee
- headquarters to the cover-up trials. Impatient at times with the
- evasiveness of the defendants, some of the most powerful men in
- the government, Sirica frequently took over the questioning
- himself, acting like a dogged prosecutor. His decision to
- require Nixon to turn over the incriminating tapes, upheld by
- the U.S. Supreme Court, led Nixon to resign. But Sirica, who was
- TIME's Man of the Year in 1973, felt that justice was ill served
- by that result. "He should have stood trial," Sirica wrote in
- his memoirs. "No matter how great his personal loss, Nixon did
- manage to keep himself above the law."
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