John Joseph Sirica

U.S. District Court Judge John Joseph Sirica (1904-1992) came to national prominence when he presided over the Watergate affair trials and confronted President Richard Nixon's claim of executive privilege used to protect private presidential tapes.

John Joseph Sirica was born on March 19, 1904, in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was one of the two sons born to Ferdinand ("Fred") and Rose (Zinno) Sirica. His father was an Italian immigrant; his mother was born in New Haven. Sirica's early childhood was spent moving around the South, as his father sought a warm climate for health reasons and employment. Limited finances forced Sirica to work as a boy to help support his family.

Sirica's family settled in Washington, D.C., when he was around 14 years old. He enrolled in the George Washington Law School at the age of 17, never having attended college. Finding his studies too difficult, he left school after one month. Sirica learned to box at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and supported himself by working as a physical education and boxing instructor for the Knights of Columbus and fighting in occasional boxing matches. Determined to embark on a professional career, Sirica returned to the study of law and earned an LL.B. degree in 1926 from Georgetown University Law School. Later in his distinguished career he was to be awarded ten honorary degrees. He was admitted to the District of Columbia bar shortly after graduation.

Sirica's long legal career began with private practice in 1927. He was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on August 1, 1930, and resigned that post to return to private practice on January 15, 1934. While building his career as a trial lawyer, he became active in Republican Party politics. He worked in five presidential campaigns, beginning in 1936.

President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Sirica to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He was sworn in on April 2, 1957. Sirica presided over a wide range of complicated and controversial civil and criminal cases and earned a reputation as a tough, law and order, and hardworking judge of high integrity. He was nicknamed "Maximum John" to reflect his inclination to give the longest sentences permitted by the laws.

Sirica became chief judge of the U.S. District Court through seniority on April 2, 1971. The new post gave him administrative responsibilities, including the right to assign special cases to particular judges and to oversee the work of the federal grand juries. In this capacity he assigned to himself the task of presiding over the Watergate cases.

The Watergate affair began on June 17, 1972, with a break-in and electronic wiretapping attempt at the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in a Washington, D.C., residential and office complex called the Watergate. Seven people were arrested. Investigation showed that there were ties between the burglars and President Richard Nixon's reelection committee.

The trials began on January 10, 1973. Sirica used his power to question witnesses to draw out more information, rather than sit passively watching the attorneys do all the questioning. He also carefully used his power of sentencing to stimulate the convicted men to assist investigators probing the range of illegal activities. These tactics contributed to the gradual uncovering of evidence in the complex political scandal.

The action of most historic value was Sirica's confrontation with President Nixon. This battle began on July 16, 1973, when Alexander Butterfield, a former White House staff member, disclosed that Nixon had been secretly taping conversations in the president's offices. Archibald Cox, appointed as special prosecutor to head the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, went to Sirica's court to seek a subpoena for eight tapes that contained specific White House conversations about the Watergate affair. Although a subpoena had rarely been served on a president, Sirica agreed to issue one. On July 26 the judge received a letter from Nixon in response. In the letter Nixon invoked the doctrine of executive privilege, claiming that the president was not subject to judicial orders to compel action by subpoena.

Sirica was concerned about stepping off into new legal territory and about the effects on Nixon if the tapes were disclosed. Yet, relying on very old precedent, he reached a decision about the next step in this confrontation. On August 29, 1973, he ordered the president to give him the tapes for his own private hearing. In this way Sirica tried to recognize the privilege to protect presidential privacy but also to uphold a principle that the courts could decide what was privileged. Sirica proposed to listen and select which parts of the tapes should be given to the grand jury. The White House appealed the decision. Sirica's opinion was upheld by the circuit Court of Appeals on October 12, 1973. On October 22, Sirica was told by the president's lawyer that the tapes would be submitted.

The confrontation over presidential privilege continued, however. On April 16, 1974, Leon Jaworski, who succeeded Cox as special prosecutor, asked Sirica to subpoena an additional 64 tapes. The judge, thinking the subpoena questions resolved, agreed. The White House refused to honor that subpoena. Jaworski made a dramatic decision, and on May 24 he asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a direct review and immediate consideration of the case, thereby bypassing the appeals process and saving time. The Supreme Court justices, in an unusual July session, upheld the order and issued their milestone ruling interpreting executive privilege on July 24. The public disclosure of the taped conversations was a factor in forcing Nixon to resign from office on August 9, 1974.

Sirica continued to preside over other Watergate trials and sentencing in the succeeding months. When he finally finished the last of that legal business, in the fall of 1977, he had devoted five years to the Watergate affair.

Sirica's treatment of the Watergate trials brought him national recognition. He was chosen "1973 Man of the Year" by Time Magazine. A grassroots effort was made to seek a presidential nomination for Sirica in 1976, but he declined to run for that office.

As required by federal law, Sirica stepped down as chief judge of the court on March 18, 1974, having reached his 70th birthday, but he remained a full-time member of the bench. He became senior judge of the court, entering a period of semi-retirement, on November 1, 1977. He chose full retirement October 1, 1986. Sirica lived with his wife, Lucile M. (Camalier), whom he married on February 26, 1952. They raised two daughters and one son. In 1992, at the age of 88, Sirica died of cardiac arrest in Washington, DC.

Further Reading

The judge's perspectives on his life and judicial motives are found in his autobiography, John J. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight (1979). This can be supplemented by reading "Standing Firm for the Primacy of Law," Time (January 7, 1974). Elaboration on the Watergate court cases and subpoenas can be found in James Doyle, Not Above the Law (1977) and in Leon Jaworski, The Right and the Power (1976). A nice final tribute to Sirica, John Sirica: A Man for His Season, was written by Larry Martz for Newsweek (August 24, 1992). □

SIRICA, JOHN J. 1905-

Federal judge

Man of the Year

Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1973, John J. Sirica was a model of integrity as the presiding federal court judge during the Watergate case. He exposed the truth behind the various deceits of the Nixon administration, flushed malefactors from cover, and insisted that the president act according to the law he was sworn to obey. His zeal in pursuing the case made him the object of some criticism, but without Sirica's dogged persistence Watergate might never have been exposed.

Fighting for Success

Sirica's determination to get at the truth in the Watergate case was characteristic of a man whose life was spent overcoming adversity. Son of an Italian immigrant stricken with tuberculosis, Sirica followed his father (a barber) and the rest of his family on their travels through the South and the West—Florida, Louisiana, California—seeking a healthy climate. The constant in their lives was poverty: Sirica supplemented his father's income by waxing cars and selling newspapers. He nonetheless managed to graduate from Columbia Preparatory School and, after several false starts, in 1926 finally graduated from Georgetown Law School. Although an unimposing man physically (standing five feet six inches tall), Sirica worked his way through college as a boxing coach and sparring partner; his lifelong friend, boxing champion Jack Dempsey, was his best man when he wed, in 1952.

"Maximum John."

A Republican, Sirica's first law position was as a prosecutor on the staff of the U.S. Attorney General in Washington under President Herbert Hoover. The Roosevelt years were a lean time for Sirica, who was struggling with a private law practice. His activism in Republican politics, however, resulted in his appointment to the federal bench by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. Sirica gained the nickname "Maximum John" by being a favorite of prosecutors, especially hard when sentencing white-collar criminals. His quick temper and combativeness and his tendency to ignore legal nuances resulted in many of his decisions being overturned on appeal and brought him constant criticism from civil libertarians.

Hunt for the Truth

Ironically, Sirica's tendency to stretch the law for the sake of justice was precisely what made him such an effective participant in the Watergate case. Called to preside over the original case charging seven men with the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex, Sirica consistently refused to accept the evasions and excuses of the Watergate burglars. The Nixon administration originally proposed that the seven-man burglary team operated independently of the White House; Sirica rejected the notion outright. During testimony in the case, when burglar Bernard Barker maintained he did not know who paid his expenses, Sirica snapped, "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you." He jailed Los Angeles Times newsman John Lawrence for contempt of court when he refused to turn over Watergate-related evidence (a decision reversed on appeal). Most important, he imposed stiff sentences for five of the Watergate burglars—thirty-five to forty years each—but made the sentences "provisional" upon their cooperation in getting to the heart of the Watergate affair. With burglar James Mc-Cord, such tactics eventually elicited the confession that testimony in the Watergate case had been perjured and that political pressure had been applied to the defendants from the White House. McCord's confession broke the Watergate case but brought protests from civil libertarians that Sirica was acting in a biased fashion. Such accusations brought a typically blunt response from Sirica: "I don't think we should sit up here like nincompoops," he said. "The function of a trial court is to search for the truth."

Sources:

J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (New York: Viking, 1976);

Time, 103 (7 January 1974): 8-20.