WATERGATE NOTES: An Improper Offer

In April 1973, President Nixon was looking for a new, permanent FBI director. He improperly offered the job to Federal Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr., who was then presiding over the trial of Daniel Ellsberg and refused to discuss it. Last week it became known that Nixon made the same unethical proposition at around the same time to Assistant Attorney General Henry E. Petersen, who was then in charge of the Watergate investigation.

According to records received by the House Judiciary Committee, Petersen told a Watergate grand jury that he was twice offered the job. He said that he shrugged it off as an “indiscreet thing to say” and “not one of my ambitions.”

Indeed, he considered it more a clumsy attempt at flattery by the President, who privately bragged to top aides that he had Petersen “on a short leash,” than an actual job offer. Later Nixon appoint ed Clarence Kelley as permanent successor to the late J. Edgar Hoover.