Richard Kleindienst

Richard Kleindienst
68th United States Attorney General
In office June 12, 1972 – April 30, 1973
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	John Mitchell
Succeeded by	Elliot Richardson
10th United States Deputy Attorney General
In office January 20, 1969 – June 12, 1972
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Warren Christopher
Succeeded by	Ralph Erickson
Personal details
Born	Richard Gordon Kleindienst (1923-08-05)August 5, 1923 Winslow, Arizona, U.S.
Died	February 3, 2000(2000-02-03) (aged 76) Prescott, Arizona, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Margaret Dunbar
Education	Harvard University (BA, LLB)
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1943–1946
Unit	United States Army Air Corps

Richard Gordon Kleindienst /kline-DEENST/ (August 5, 1923 – February 3, 2000) was an American lawyer, politician, and a U.S. Attorney General during the Watergate political scandal.

Early life and career

Kleindienst was born August 5, 1923, in Winslow, Arizona, the son of Gladys (Love) and Alfred R. Kleindienst.^[1] He served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946, and attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, graduating from the latter in 1950.^[2]

From 1953 to 1954, he served in the Arizona House of Representatives; he followed that with some 15 years of private legal practice.^[3] He concurrently was Arizona Republican Party chairman from 1956 to 1960 and 1961 to 1963, and in 1964, the Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, losing the general election to Sam Goddard, 53%-47%.

Nixon administration

Kleindienst suspended his private practice in 1969 to accept the post of Deputy Attorney General of the United States offered him by President Richard Nixon. This gave him responsibilities relating to the government's suit against ITT. Nixon and his aide John Ehrlichman told him to drop the case, which created an impression that they were violating their ethical obligations in favor of ITT, and that, as an attorney himself, Kleindienst was now obligated to report these ethical lapses to the state bars in the jurisdictions involved. But in his official role as Deputy Attorney General, he also repeatedly told Congress no one had interfered with his department's handling of the case, not mentioning Nixon and Ehrlichman.^[4][5]

On February 15, 1972, US Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell (R) resigned to work in the Nixon re-election campaign and President Richard Nixon nominated Kleindienst to succeed Mitchell.^[6] After having served as Acting Attorney General for four months, his appointment was approved by the Senate on June 12 after an attempt to block the nomination by Ted Kennedy on the grounds of his involvement with ITT, failed.^[7]

Unknown to Kleindienst, leaders of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) had tasked Gordon Liddy with arranging various covert operations, one of which was to be a burglary of the Democratic Party National Headquarters in Washington, DC. Before dawn on a Saturday, five days after Kleindienst's nomination, James McCord and four other burglars operating on Liddy's instructions were arrested at Watergate complex. Later in the morning Kleindienst was officially notified of the arrests. Liddy, after a phone consultation about the arrests with CREEP Deputy Director Jeb Magruder (who had managed CREEP up until March of that year, and had the most direct organizational authority over Liddy's activities), personally approached Kleindienst the same day at a private golf club in Bethesda, Maryland. Liddy told him that the break-in had originated within CREEP, and that Kleindienst should arrange the release of the burglars, to reduce the risk of exposure of CREEP's involvement. But Kleindienst refused and ordered that the Watergate burglary investigation proceed like any other case.

He resigned in the midst of the Watergate scandal nearly a year later, on April 30, 1973. This was the same day that John Dean was fired and H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman quit.

Kleindienst then returned to private practice. In 1974, he pleaded guilty to failing to testify fully to the Senate in a pre-Watergate investigation, involving alleged favoritism shown to International Telephone & Telegraph Corp, during his testimony in his Senate confirmation hearings.^[8]

Later life

In 1982, Kleindienst was accused of having perjured himself to the Arizona Bar regarding how much he knew about a white-collar criminal he represented. He was cleared of all criminal charges brought against him.^[9]

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

Bibliography

• Kleindienst, Richard (1985). Justice: The Memoirs of Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books. ISBN 0-915463-15-6.
• 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.

References