Richard Kleindienst

Richard Gordon Kleindienst (August 5, 1923 – February 3, 2000) was an American lawyer and politician.

Born in Winslow, Arizona, he served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946. He attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, graduating from the latter in 1950.

From 1953 to 1954 he served in the Arizona House of Representatives and then went into private practice, which he continued until 1969. In 1964, he was the Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, but lost to Sam Goddard, 53%-47%.

He was Deputy Attorney General of the United States from 1969 until 1972, and was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Richard Nixon on June 12, 1972. Prior to the appointment he had repeatedly told Congress no one interfered with his department's handling of the ITT case. Two years later the Watergate tapes showed both Nixon and presidential aide Ehrlichman had told him to drop the case. All three of the men were attorneys, and the standard ethical response would have been, at the least, for Kleindienst to report Nixon and Ehrlichman's ethical lapses to the state bars in the jurisdictions involved.

The initial arrests of the five Watergate burglars took place in the early hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972. Kleindienst was officially notified of the arrests later that morning. The same day, while at a private golf club in Bethesda, Maryland, Kleindienst was personally approached by Gordon Liddy, and informed that the break-in had originated within the Committee to Re-elect the President. Liddy declared further that he, Kleindienst, should now effect the release of the burglars in order to prevent their connection to the CRP from becoming widely known.

Liddy initiated this meeting with Kleindienst after speaking by phone with the CRP's Deputy Director Jeb Magruder, who was in California. Magruder, who had managed the CRP up until March 1972, had the most direct organizational authority over Liddy's activities. He later said the idea of having Kleindienst intervene to free the Watergate burglars, particularly James McCord, came from CRP Chairman John N. Mitchell. Mitchell, who had been Kleindienst's predecessor as Attorney General, always denied Magruder's accusation until his death in 1988. In any event, Kleindienst did nothing to help secure the release of the arrested burglars. Again placed in a difficult situation by unethical behavior of co-workers as he had been in the ITT phone calls, he hesitated to do what he really might have done. Had he reported or acted on Liddy's confession, it would have broken the whole case open immediately, and probably prevented the President from ever being tempted to cover it up. The related crimes of Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Dean, the president's closest advisors, would not have occurred. The "damage" would have been contained to the Committee to Reelect the President, and would not have reached the White House.

In any case Kleindienst resigned on April 30, 1973 in the midst of the Watergate scandal, and returned to private practice. Kleindienst resigned the same day John Dean was fired and H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman quit. He was convicted of a misdemeanor for perjury during his testimony in the Senate during his confirmation hearings. He was fined $100 and given a suspended jail sentence by a judge who described him as a person of high ethical nature, and said his crime was that he was too loyal.

Kleindienst was a close confidant of William H. Rehnquist. Kleindienst and Rehnquist were active in the Arizona Republican Party, and were appointed to serve under John Mitchell as deputy attorneys general in 1969. Rehnquist was nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1971 and later elevated to Chief Justice in 1986. It was the close association with Kleindienst that led Rehnquist to disqualify himself from the Watergate tapes case (United States v. Nixon), which directed Nixon to comply with the subpoena issued by Judge John J. Sirica to turn over his tapes. The 8-0 opinion was handed down July 24, 1974 and the White House turned over the tapes to Congress. The scandalous revelations brought disgrace on the Presidency and Nixon resigned 15 days later.

Eight years later, according to the New York Times February 3, 2000 obituary of Kleindienst, he had a second brush with ethical charges. Said to have perjured himself to the Arizona Bar regarding how much he knew about a white-collar criminal he represented, he was cleared.

Kleindienst died of lung cancer on February 3, 2000, at the age of 76.

Further reading

• Kleindienst, Richard (1985). Justice: The Memoirs of Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books. ISBN 0915463156. 

New York Times digital archive, February 3, 2000, "Richard G. Kleindienst, Figure in Watergate Era, Dies at 76."

For Kleindienst's limited role in Watergate, see Leon Jaworski, The Right and the Power, and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men. As spelled out above, had he taken more of a role, the Break-in would probably never have led to much of a Cover-up, except by lower level workers and John Mitchell.

External links

• American National Biography Online: Kleindienst, Richard G.