Fifty years ago, March 1, 1974, marked the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. That’s the day the grand jury’s indictment was made public, naming seven of Nixon’s top aides in the alleged cover-up of those responsible for the Watergate burglary. Included were John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general; Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff; and John Ehrlichman, his head of Domestic Council. The indictment detailed 45 overt acts in furtherance of the cover-up. While few involved actions of these top aides, the law of conspiracy is such that, once a conspiracy is shown to exist, it takes virtually no additional evidence to add additional co-conspirators, other than the prosecutors’ allegation. There also were 19 unindicted co-conspirators (including Nixon), but their names did not become public until months later.
It was quite a public spectacle, with Chief Judge John Sirica demanding the entire grand jury appear in person so that he could poll them individually. To the complete surprise of Nixon’s Watergate defense team, prosecutors produced a sealed “presentment,” which they asked be forwarded to the House Judiciary Committee, then considering Nixon’s impeachment. With great drama, Sirica “unsealed” the 55-page document, noted its contents, resealed it, and deferred any ruling. The sealed document, along with a briefcase stuffed with additional materials, was quickly nicknamed the “Road Map,” since it was said to detail a clear path to Nixon’s impeachment.
Later that afternoon, Sirica named himself to preside over the trial of these defendants, as he had over the earlier burglary trial.
Shortly thereafter, Haldeman’s defense counsel wrote a one-paragraph letter to Sirica, copying “all counsel,” asking if he had been meeting with prosecutors (he had, but these meetings did not become known for 40 years). Sirica never responded to the letter itself but did announce in open court that his actions could not be questioned, since everything he had done was in furtherance of his authority as chief judge. On March 18, Sirica ordered the Road Map’s transmittal to the Congress.
Defendants appealed to the D.C. Circuit, asking for an evidentiary hearing to explore any meetings between prosecutors and Sirica. The ACLU joined in this request, but it was denied in a one-sentence order, without even allowing the opportunity for oral argument.
Nixon’s being named an unindicted co-conspirator in that March 1 indictment did not become public until June 6, to devastating effect. Nixon’s lawyers claimed he was immune from such action, which became an issue before the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon, but the court avoided reaching any decision on this issue as it upheld Leon Jaworski’s subpoena for 64 additional tapes on July 24.
Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, and his top aides were convicted on all counts in the cover-up trial that ended on Jan. 1, 1975.
There matters stood for the next 45 years, until Jaworski’s confidential Watergate files were retrieved by our National Archives from Jaworski’s alma mater, Baylor Law School, in Waco, Texas. They were first made public in 2013, in response to my FOIA request. What those files showed was that Jaworski had, indeed, been meeting in secret with Sirica — and even detailing their discussions in a series of his own memos. The top four special prosecutors, including Jaworski, had secretly met with Sirica on Dec. 14, 1973 — just three days after turning over transcripts to key tape recordings. One of those prosecutors urged a second meeting with Sirica to pre-clear the idea of a grand jury presentment. That meeting occurred on Feb. 11, with Jaworski promising a memo justifying the whole idea of such a presentment. That memo is dated Feb. 15 and, again, presented to Sirica in secret. The senior prosecution staff was subsequently informed that Sirica had approved the Road Map’s format. Finally, because the March 1 proceedings were rather complicated, Jaworski met secretly with Sirica that morning to rehearse their respective roles. (READ MORE from Geoff Shepard: Yesterday and Today: Judicial Bias in Washington, DC)
Each of these secret meetings between Jaworski and Sirica were in flagrant violation of our Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantees. If they had been known at the time, defendants’ convictions would have been vacated, and Sirica and offending prosecutors would have been removed from the case.
As for the Road Map itself, it was not unsealed until Oct. 11, 2018, in response to my court petition. Only then, some 45 years after Nixon’s resignation, did we first learn of the specific allegations the prosecutors had secretly lodged against the president — which, once public, are easily refuted.
Still, what grand jurors were actually told by prosecutors in convincing them to name Nixon a co-conspirator remains sealed under grand jury secrecy laws. This is in spite of several attempts to have this unsealed. On June 10, 1974, Nixon’s lawyers moved Sirica:
to disclose to the President any and all transcripts, tapes and recordings of Presidential conversations, grand jury minutes and exhibits, and any and all other matters occurring before the grand jury which pertained to grand jury action in naming or authorizing the Special Prosecutor to identify Richard M. Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Sirica denied this motion on June 18, but it was then renewed before the Supreme Court on June 19. As stated earlier, the motion was not acted upon by the court in reaching its decision in U.S. v. Nixon.
Almost four decades later, I urged the same action as a part of my petition for the Road Map’s unsealing. While that part of my petition was successful, Judge Beryl Howell unsealed the Road Map itself but declined to unseal any additional grand jury materials. Thus, to this day, we do not know what grand jurors were specifically told to convince them to name Nixon as a co-conspirator.
I believe that, whenever we do find out, we will see — as with the Road Map — that Nixon was falsely accused.
Geoff Shepard came to Washington in 1969 as a White House fellow after graduating from Harvard Law School. He served on President Richard Nixon’s White House staff for five years, including a year as deputy counsel on the president’s Watergate defense team. He has written three books about the internal prosecutorial documents he’s uncovered, many of which are posted on his website, www.shepardonwatergate.com.
