>>The most striking similarities between Nazi jurisprudence
and the current investigations are the working backward from verdict to "evidence", and the idea that the end justifies any means.
Starr is very restrained in that regard compared to the true masters:
What if Judge Sirica
Were With Us Today?
By DOUGLAS CADDY
The Clinton scandals, with all the claims of coverup and executive
privilege, are certainly reminiscent of Watergate. But there is a crucial
difference: This case lacks a John Sirica, the chief judge of the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia who played such a crucial role
in Watergate. The untold historical record reveals that the early actions of
Sirica, who assigned the Watergate case to himself, helped spur the
subsequent coverup and obstruction of justice that ultimately led to the
resignation of President Nixon and the criminal convictions of many
Watergate figures.
The Watergate scandal began at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, when
Washington, D.C., police arrested five men on burglary charges at the
Watergate office building. At 3:05 a.m. E. Howard Hunt phoned me from
his White House office and asked if he could come immediately to my
Washington residence. I had been Hunt's personal attorney for several
years.
Hunt arrived half an hour later and informed me
what had transpired earlier at the Watergate. He
retained me to represent him in the case and then
called G. Gordon Liddy, who also hired me. At
that time, about two hours after the burglary, both
Hunt and Liddy requested I also represent the five
people arrested, four Cuban-Americans and James
McCord, who were by then incarcerated in the
D.C. jail.
On June 28--11 days later--while working on the
case in the federal courthouse in Washington, I
was served with a subpoena, bearing the name of
Chief Judge Sirica, to appear "forthwith" before the federal grand jury
investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell grabbed
me by the arm and pulled me into the grand jury room.
From June 28 until July 19 I was to appear before the grand jury on six
occasions and answer hundreds of questions. I drew the line, however, on
the advice of my own legal counsel, at answering 38 questions we felt
invaded my clients' Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the
attorney-client privilege. A typical question: "Between the hours of Friday
at midnight, June 16, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, June 17, did you receive a
visit from Mr. Everett Howard Hunt?" We believed answering such
questions would incriminate Hunt and Liddy, who had not been arrested,
and would violate their constitutional rights.
Judge Sirica, rejecting such arguments out of hand, threatened to jail me
for contempt of court. When I went before the grand jury on July 13, I
refused to answer the 38 questions. Within an hour I was back before
Judge Sirica, who immediately held me in contempt and ordered me to jail.
Five days later, on July 18, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the
contempt citation and ordered me to testify under threat of being jailed
again. The opinion, which I found gratuitously insulting, declared: "Even if
such a relationship does exist, certain communications, such as
consultation in furtherance of a crime, are not within the privilege."
In his July 19, 1972, Oval Office tape, Nixon is recorded as expressing
dismay to John Ehrlichman: "Do you mean that the circuit court ordered an
attorney to testify?"
Ehrlichman replied, "It [unintelligible] me, except that this damn circuit that
we've got here, with [Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me
every time they do something."
Nixon then asked, "Why didn't he appeal to the Supreme Court?"
The answer is that my attorneys and I believed we had built a strong
enough court record that if Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested individuals
were found guilty, their convictions could be overturned on appeal
because of Sirica's and the appeals court's abuse of me as their attorney.
However, Judge Sirica's actions had an unintended consequence. Hunt
and Liddy, seeing their attorney falsely accused by Judge Sirica of being a
participant in their crime, realized early on that they were not going to get a
fair trial, so they embarked on a coverup involving "hush money." As Hunt
has written: "If Sirica was treating Caddy--an Officer of the Court--so
summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate--then
those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor
understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became
tragically accurate."
Liddy appealed his conviction to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
claiming that my being forced to testify denied him his Sixth Amendment
right to counsel. The court upheld his conviction: "The evidence against
appellant . . . was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional
error in the comment of the prosecutor and the instruction of the trial
judge, there is no reasonable possibility it contributed to the conviction."
Neither Judge Sirica nor the appeals court acknowledged that their assault
on the attorney-client privilege helped spur the ensuing coverup and
obstruction of justice.
I was never indicted, named an unindicted co-conspirator, disciplined by
the Bar or even contacted by the Senate Watergate committee or the
House Judiciary Committee, whose staff included a young lawyer named
Hillary Rodham.
Now the issue of attorney-client privilege is again being raised, this time by
Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer, Francis D. Carter, who has been
subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury and bring the notes he took
while representing Ms. Lewinsky. Mr. Carter got involved when Vernon
Jordan referred Ms. Lewinsky to him in January. On March 4 Mr.
Carter's attorney, Charles Ogletree, argued before Chief Judge Norma
Hollaway Johnson that the subpoena should be quashed: "Once you start
to allow the government to intrude on the attorney-client relationship and
allow them to pierce the attorney-client privilege, clients will no longer
have a sense of confidence and respect that lawyers should have."
Coming days will reveal how Mr. Carter fares in his fight to protect Ms.
Lewinsky's constitutional rights and what effect this will have on the case's
ultimate outcome. To date, at least, Judge Johnson has shown a restraint
that her predecessor Judge Sirica did not.
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