Описание:

It was the most important criminal case ever to be tried in the courts of the United States. It involved the most powerful men in the government and precipitated a constitutional confrontation between the executive and the judiciary more important than any other in our history. At the center of this storm sat one man, U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica. From the first indictments against a bizarre band of “third-rate burglars,” through a series of legal altercations with the president of the United States, to the final judgment against the high-level conspirators, Judge Sirica presided. This is his own story of that five-year struggle that helped preserve the rule of law in this country.

The story is told against the background of one man’s life, marked by chance encounters with people who befriended him, advised him, and turned his life into the path toward the federal judiciary. Prominent are his brief career as a professional prize fighter and his friendship with the boxing greats Jack Britton and Jack Dempsey.

It is rare that a judge writes the full story of the trials and legal battles in which he participates. But Judge Sirica here gives his own version, a version never before told, of his role in the incredible Watergate case. From the very beginning, Judge Sirica suspected there was more to the case than the official version being peddled by officials of President Nixon’s campaign and by the White House itself. He tells how his skepticism finally led to the breakdown of the conspiracy of silence and the unravelling of the presidential cover-up that began with James McCord’s letter.

The year-long confrontation with President Nixon over the tape recordings that eventually provided the evidence leading to the first presidential resignation in our history is treated in detail. The judge gives his views of the law, and of the president’s self-serving arguments, and tells, for the first time, his plans for dealing with Nixon’s expected refusal to abide by the order to produce the tapes. The courtroom drama of the search for the missing tapes and the person responsible for the eighteen-and-a-half- minute gap is recounted from the judge’s perspective. He tells of his reactions as, once the tapes were finally turned over to him, he became the first person outside the Nixon White House to hear the incriminating evidence.

The trial of the president’s men, the efforts of their lawyers to harass the judge into legal mistakes, and then the final judgments against these once-powerful figures are seen through the judge’s eyes. He tells of his decisions to send these men to prison and how those sentences were determined, as well as his feelings about reducing the sentences of some of the conspirators.

Finally, Sirica renders his judgment on the chief conspirator himself, Richard M. Nixon, and on his pardon by President Ford.