When White House staffers came up with yet another botched tape last week, they faced the attack of a brash and bright lawyer named Richard Ben-Veniste, who, at the age of 30, is the main courtroom performer for the staff of the Special Prosecutor for Watergate. After hearing that the tape was indecipherable, Ben-Veniste urged Judge John J. Sirica to take custody of all the presidential tapes in question to ensure their "integrity" — a request that the judge promptly granted.
It is Ben-Veniste and not the new Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who has been handling the courtroom duels with the White House lawyers over Watergate. During his three weeks on the job, Jaworski has been content to give plenty of leeway to the staff of 80 people, including 38 lawyers, that he inherited from Archibald Cox. In fact, the staff has become an important force on its own in the struggle to get to the bottom of Watergate. Several key members are determined to quit if Jaworski does not continue to press ahead with the investigation.
Along with their new power, the Watergate staffers have been emerging from their largely anonymous role under Cox to become public figures in Washington. For days, Ben-Veniste and three other lawyers, including Jill Wine Volner, 30, impressed spectators and attorneys with the expert way in which they questioned White House witnesses about the presidential tapes. Indeed, Ben-Veniste gave the impression that he had memorized almost every known fact about the complex Watergate case.
The chief of staff under Cox and now Jaworski is sandy-haired, soft-spoken Deputy Special Prosecutor Henry S. ("Hank") Ruth Jr., 42. A product of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he has had more than a dozen years of experience in law enforcement. Among his previous jobs, he served as an investigator of organized crime for Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department, headed the Nixon Administration's National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, and directed New York Mayor John Lindsay's Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
In his low-keyed manner, Ruth held the staff together after the Saturday Night Massacre. That very evening, in fact, he called a staff meeting and reminded the embittered lawyers that by walking out they could well waste six months of intensive investigation into Watergate and other matters. Ruth said he assumed everyone would be showing up for work as usual. There was a hushed moment. "Those who won't be here, raise your hands," said Ruth. Not a single hand went up.
The Watergate staffers now often put in 14-hour days, leaving themselves little time for socializing, other than dinner together after working late or lunch on submarine sandwiches in one of the offices located at 1425 K Street. Only two members are over 40; several are in their 20s. About 15 of them were just finishing a year of clerking for a judge when they were recruited. Many of the others have served as state or federal prosecutors.
Most of the senior staff members are from the East, and their annual salaries range from $23,000 to $36,000 (like Cox, Jaworski earns $38,000). To facilitate their work, they are divided into five task forces, each of which is assigned to a different area. The task force targets and their leaders: