•junmni. the bench was a reward for political Critics contended that Sirica had Service to the Republican Party, John Sirica, ?overstepped his bounds. But his -'that his educational background was conduct was sanctioned enthusias- L.Mediocre and that he was known as -lit:ally by the U.S. Court of Appeals Careless, irritable trial judge. Watergate '2u; upholding the conspiracy, bur- Born March 19, 1904, in Water- fglary, wiretapping and eavesdrop- _,hury,- Conn., John Joseph Sirica was Judge Di ping convictions of G. Gordon Liddy Abe son of an Italian immigrant fa- stemming from the Watergate break-in on June 17, 1972. By Barnes "Judge Sirica's palpable search w..biNsmt Post Stiff Writer 'for the truth in such a trial was not ther and a second-generation Italian John J. Sirica, the U.S. District 'Only permissible, it was in the high- American mother. When he was 6 Court judge whose persistence in est tradition of his office as a fed- or 7,the struggling family, search- searching for the facts while pre- -*rat judge: U.S. appeals court ing for a better fife, set out on an siding over the Watergate cases Ied Judge Harold Leventhal wrote. odyssey that brought them in 1918 to President Nixon's resignation, "Simply stated, I had no intention to Washington. died of cardiac arrest yesterday at of sitting on the bench like a nin- They settled in a two-room flat Georgetown University Hospital. compoop and watching the parade above a shoemaker's shop on D He was 88. go by," Sirica recalled in a book sev Street NW and Sirica worked as a • Sirica's order that tape record- eral years after the trial, - trash collector's helper. The job ings of conversations As the events of Watergate un- made him responsive to his father's about the Watergate break-in be folded, Sirica's original suspicions urgings about going to school. made available to prosecutors pre- He enrolled in night classes at cipitated Nixon's resignation in that .there was more to the case Emerson Preparatory School, then 1974. The tapes revealed that than a simple burglary were more transferred to Columbia Prepara- Nixon had approved plans for the 'than amply borne out. In all, 19 of- torY School. In 1921 he graduated Watergate coverup six days --after ; ficials of the Nixon administratien with what he later said . was the the break-in at the Democratic Na- "'n,Taiid reelection campaign, including tional Committee'i headquarters in the president's two closest aides equivalent of two or three years of the by men who wand his attorney general, went to high school. were working for the Committee to jaiL.The preaident, facing impeach- It was possible then to go from Reelect the President. : meat proceedings in the House of high school into law school, and In directing the White House to t Representatives, resigned on Aug. Sirica enrolled first at George produce the tapes, Sirica set him- fr: 90.1974. Washington University Law School, self on a constitutional collision': Sirica had become' a household then at Georgetown University. He dropped out of each after a month, course with Nixon, who tried to name in America by the time the but in January 1923, he returned yoke executive privilege and argue - last of the appeals was exhausted in Georgetown and stuck with it. _ that the tapes were riot subject to 1977. Having learned to box at the judicial scrutiny. But in a historic Universities awarded him lion- ' ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court up- YMCA, he paid expenses by teach- orary degrees. Time magazine ing boxing and acting as a physical held Sirica, ruling unanimously that; made him its Man of the Year for the judiciary must have the last education instructor at a gym, 1973. After it all ended, Sirica word in an orderly constitutional where he met men who would help system. wrote a book about Watergate, "To him later in his career. Throughout his conduct of the Set the Record Straight." 'Finishing law school in June In his book, he expressed his out- See SIRICA, Al2, Col. 1 1926; he took the bar exam, but ' rage for the first time, saying that certain that he had failed, went to Nixon should have been indicted Miami to join his family. In mid-July . SIRICA, F1'01111 M after leaving the presidency for his he won a 10-round professional part in the Watergate coverup. • bout there, but he learned about Watergate trials, Sirica • made it Jon R. Waltz, a Northwestern that time that he had passed theibar clear that he intended to get at the University Law School professor, exam. truth of 'what had happened, and called Sirica a tough, tenacious, pa- Returning to Washington, he was said that in doing so, he did not in- triotic Harry Truman of the bench turned down by the city's major lay/. tend to be bound by traditional But it was also true, Waltz r firms, but he finally joined a small ideas of courtroom procedures. He 'in his review of the judge's. L. firm practicing criminal law. ' often questioned witnesses himself, "that there are those who would Sirica lost the first 13 ceurt-as- and he instructed jurors that it was have said that Judge John Sirica signed felony cases he tried. Once, their duty to !consider nat. just what represents nearly everything that in exasperation, he punched a vice had happened, but whY. When he can go wrong with the federal ju- squad policeman during an argu- suspected that 'what. was unfolding - dicial selection process." ment in the prosecutor's office. in his courtroom was less than the Waltz said Sirica's nomination to When an old sparring partner, Leo whole truth, he made his feelings Rover, became U.S. attorney in Washington during the Hoover ad- ministration, Sirica joined his staff. Sirica said in a prologue to his book that he "never forgot" the fa- vor the Republicans had done him. In 1934, figuring the Democrats

would soon replace Rover, Sirica left to begin 15 years of private practice that he later described as "my starvation period." Briefly he tried his hand at pro- moting prize fights. The venture flopped, but he formed a fast friend- ship with former • heavyweight champion . During World War II, the two toured the country selling government savings bonds, and when Sirica married in 1952, Dempsey was his best man. Sirica became increasingly active in the Republican Party, making speeches before Italian American voters during presidential cam- paigns. He was counsel to several U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica on his last day before retiring at 82 in 1988. congressional committees. In 1949, Hogan and Hartson, seeking a law- yer with trial experience, hired him. Eventually he headed the firm's trial section. In 1957, a vacancy arose on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and Sirica called in some chits. On April 2, 1957, he The pace of federal grand jury was sworn in as a federal judge. and congressional investigations Once an the bench, Sirica devel- began to quicken. When the exis- oped a reputation as an outspoken, tence of the White House tapes be- .—fternoon of Jan. 1, 1975. Sev- unpredictable judge. Reporters came known, a long legal battle be- other former White House of- gave him the nickname "Maximum gan over whether Sirica and the ficials already had pleaded guilty John" because of his stiff sentences. prosecutors could hear them. and been jailed by then, and Sirica He was reversed on appeal more "I found the whole thing disgust- reduced the sentences of most of often than most judges. ing," was Sirica's immediate reac- those who had cooperated with the When the first of the Watergate tion when he heard the tapes. "A investigation. cases arrived at U.S. District Court lifetime of dealing with criminal law After Watergate, Sirica contin- in 1972, Sirica, by virtue of senior- . . had not hardened me enough to ued for many years to sit as a senior ity, was the chief judge, and he as- hear with equanimity the low. po- judge at U.S. District Court, al- signed it to himself. litical scheming that was being though at a reduced schedule. But the trial failed to get to the played back to me from the White He is survived by his wife, the heart of the matter, and Sirica im- House offices," he said in his book. former Lucile Camalier, and three posed stiff provisional sentences on On July 24, 1974, the Supreme children, John Jr., Patricia Anne and the defendants, leaving open the Court upheld Sirica's order that the possibility of a reduction for those Watergate tapes be made available, who decided to cooperate with fed- and Nixon resigned 15 days later. eral investigators. That fall Sirica presided over the Eventually, one of the original trial of several top Nixon aides, in- defendants, James McCord, wrote a cluding. H.R. Haldeman, John Ehr- letter to Sirica charging that per- lichman and former attorney gen- jury had been committed at the ini- eral John Mitchell, who were found tial trial and that payments had been made to keep the defendants guilty in a verdict returned late in from implicating higher-ups. In March 1973, Judge Sirica read the letter aloud in his courtroom, and from that point on the coverup be- gan to unravel.