Professor Samuel Dash

Oral History Project United States Courts The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit District of Columbia Circuit PROFESSOR SAMUEL DASH Interviews conducted by: Zona F. Hostetler, Esquire July10,1997, September 12, 2000, June 29, 2001, November 22, 2002, June 11, 2003 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ...................................................................... i Oral History Agreements Sara G. Dash (Mrs. Samuel Dash).......................................... iii Zona F. Hostetler .........................................................v Oral History Transcript of Interviews on: July 10, 1997............................................................1 September 12, 2000......................................................3 9 June 29, 2001. .97 November 22, 2002.....................................................144 June 11, 2003..........................................................197 Index. .................................................................... A-1 Table of Cases. B-1 Biographical Sketches Professor Samuel Dash...................................................C-1 Zona F. Hostetler, Esquire................................................C-3 NOTE The following pages record interviews conducted on the dates indicated. The interviews were electronically recorded, and the transcription was subsequently reviewed and edited by the interviewee. The contents hereof and all literary rights pertaining hereto are governed by, and are subject to, the Oral History Agreements included herewith. © 2007 Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. All rights reserved. PREFACE The goal of the Oral History Project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit is to preserve the recollections of the judges who sat on the Courts of the District of Columbia Circuit and lawyers, court staff, and others who played important roles in the history of the Circuit. The Project began in 1991. Interviews are conducted by volunteers, trained by the Society, who are members of the Bar of the District of Columbia. Indexed transcripts of these interviews and related documents are available in the Judges' Library in the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress, and the library of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia. With the permission of the interviewer, oral histories are also available on the internet through the Society's web site, www.dcchs.org. Such original audio tapes of the interviews as exist, as well as the original diskettes of the transcripts (in WordPerfect format) are in the custody of the Circuit Executive of the U.S. Courts for the District of Columbia Circuit. -i- ORAL HISTORY OF SAMUEL DASH First Interview - July 10, 1997 This is the first interview of a contemplated series of oral history interviews with Professor Samuel Dash. The interview took place at Professor Dash's office at Georgetown Law Center in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 1997. The interviewer is Zona F. Hostetler, an attorney in private practice. Ms. Hostetler: Professor Dash, you've been a prominent and distinguished lawyer, not only as a law school professor but also as a private practitioner and, most notably, in public life. We want to talk about all of these careers, about your scholarship and leadership in the fields of criminal justice and legal ethics, your work as a prosecutor, as a law professor, as a bar leader, and, of course, we especially want to talk about your work for the government, including your famous work as Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate investigation of President Richard Nixon, known as the Watergate investigation. But before we get to all of these illustrious careers, let's go back to the period before you even went to Harvard Law School. Were there any lawyers in your family? Professor Dash: No, I was the first lawyer in the family. Actually, in our family I was the first person to get a post-graduate degree. Ms. Hostetler: Had your parents gone to college? Professor Dash: No, my mother and father came to this country fleeing from Russia during the Pogroms of the early 1900's, and both of them were about five years old when they came. They grew up as poor immigrants, in Philadelphia, and I don't think they even went to high school. But my mother read a lot, and she was very literate. My father ended up in wholesale dry goods with his brother who had a leading business in dry goods. But my father -1- was a failure in it, because he really was a dreamer without an education to realize his dreams. During World War II he found himself and worked in the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia as an electronic parts specialist. Ms. Hostetler: What kind of books did your mother like to read? Professor Dash: Everything. She read the newspapers, from front to back. She would pick up and read everything. She was a voracious reader. And a believer in education. And I think all of us – I had three brothers, and later two sisters – were urged to get as good an education as we could get, and told that that would be the only way in which we could succeed in life. Ms. Hostetler: And did your father support her in that view? Professor Dash: Yes, I think he supported her. Ms. Hostetler: Did your mother read to you? Professor Dash: No, her reading was personal. But she always was very interested in what we were doing in public school, what our grades were, and she constantly held up to us a very high standard of achievement. Ms. Hostetler: Did you like to read yourself, or were you doing other activities? Professor Dash: Oh yes. Well, even before I was a junior high school student, I was constantly going to the library and bringing home piles of books. Most of them were fiction -- the romantic fiction of the times, like the Three Musketeers, and I sort of lived out the things I read. As for activities, primarily I was forming aviation clubs. At that time, airplanes weren't what we have today, but the Richfield Company and its gas stations would give out silver wings to young people and admit them into the Richfield aviation club. So I formed a group of the -2- neighborhood kids, and we got orange boxes. And we sat on the orange boxes as planes. At that time, you flew planes with a stick and I was teaching them what positions the stick should be in in order to bank, or dive, the plane. We wore our wings, and we took it very seriously. Ms. Hostetler: Did you get to go inside real planes? Professor Dash: No, but every once in a while a couple of us would ride our bikes to the Philadelphia airport, which was then a very small airport, to watch the planes. Ms. Hostetler: What years would this have been? Professor Dash: Well I would have been then, about ten years old. Ms. Hostetler: You were born when? Professor Dash: 1925, so this would been in the mid l930's. Ms. Hostetler: Was Russian spoken in your family at all? Professor Dash: No, my mother and father being five years old when they came to this country spoke a little bit of Yiddish, but they didn't know very much Yiddish. I do remember Yiddish curse words – that's how I grew up knowing what Yiddish meant. My parents had older sisters and brothers, who were older when they came here, and they were very traditional Jews. They spoke Yiddish fluently. Some of them kept Kosher...and they would criticize my mother for not keeping Kosher. Ms. Hostetler: So your mother was the rebel in the family? Professor Dash: Well, she was the American in the family. Ms. Hostetler: Did you know your grandparents? Professor Dash: No. I do remember my mother's mother living not that far away, and visiting her once or twice, but I have really almost no recollection of grandparents. -3- Ms. Hostetler: You said earlier you had brothers and sisters? Professor Dash: Yes, I had an older brother Harold, who died during the Watergate hearings in 1973. He was an architect, and as a matter of fact offered his services gratuitously during Watergate. We didn't have any place to put the staff. I had a hundred investigators and lawyers and administrative people, and we took over the Senate auditorium. But it had a sloping floor and had all those seats. Harold redesigned it for us so it became a gigantic office space with cubicles and all that. And it remained that way for Senator Church's Select Committee on Intelligence. It's since gone back to being an auditorium. Harold was an avid follower of the Watergate hearings. Ms. Hostetler: Where did he live? Professor Dash: He lived in Philadelphia. Ms. Hostetler: And that's where his architectural firm was? Professor Dash: Yes. He belonged to a very good architectural firm. Ms. Hostetler: And what about your other siblings? Professor Dash: Harold was the older brother, I was second, then Abraham was the third brother. It's interesting about him because he was the competitor, coming after Harold and me. Harold and I had achieved much during our school years, so he was constantly attempting to outdo us--even to the point that he would pick a fight with us. And the two of us actually battered him down to the ground once, and I think blood was coming from his mouth, and he just grinned up at us and said, "You're getting tired, aren't you?" (laughter) He went to the Naval Academy, got hurt in boxing, and joined the Air Force, and became a bomber pilot. He stayed on in the reserves and he got finally to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. But the interesting thing is -4- that he still wanted to beat me at everything. In the early sixties I represented the Teamsters in Philadelphia – that is, some of Hoffa's lieutenants.

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