MAN OF THE YEAR: Judge John J. Sirica: Standing Firm for the Primacy of Law

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judges—and he took it himself. That was partly because he had a relatively light docket at the time, but also because he felt that if he as a Republican judge handled the matter, and did so fairly and aggressively, no charges could be leveled that partisanship had entered the judicial process.

The Appearance of Justice Must Prevail Thus on Jan. 11, ten days before Nixon was inaugurated for his second term in a mood of festive partying and high spirits, Sirica presided solemnly in his fifth-floor courtroom in the beige U.S. Court House and served notice that he regarded the Watergate burglary as a far from simple matter. E. Howard Hunt Jr., sometime White House consultant, CIA agent and mystery novelist, offered to plead guilty to three of the six charges against him as one of the seven men arrested for the Watergate wiretapping-burglary. In this case, answered Sirica, the public would have to be assured that not only "the substance of justice" but also "the appearance of justice" was preserved. Also, because "of the apparent strength of the Government's case" against him, Hunt would have to plead guilty to all six counts or go to trial for each. Hunt admitted his guilt on all of them.

"Don't pull any punches—you give me straight answers," warned Sirica when the four Cuban Americans arrested at the Watergate pleaded guilty four days later. If anyone else was involved, Sirica added, "I want to know it and the grand jury wants to know it." The four insisted that the conspiracy stopped at the low levels of their arrested leaders: Hunt; G. Gordon Liddy, another former White House consultant and counsel for Nixon's 1972 re-election finance committee; and James W. McCord Jr., a former CIA electronic-eavesdropping expert and security chief for Nixon's re-election committee. Where did they get the money to carry out their operation? They did not know. Snapped Sirica: "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you."

Sirica was still skeptical when the Government's main witness, Former FBI Agent Al fred C. Baldwin, admitted at the trial of Liddy and McCord that he had monitored many of the conversations of Democrats on a radio receiver in the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. But Baldwin also insisted that he could not recall to whom at the Nixon re-election committee he had delivered records of the intercepted talks. "Here you are an FBI agent and you want the court and jury to believe that you gave [them] to some guard you hardly knew? Is that your testimony?" asked Sirica. It was indeed.

With the jury out of the courtroom, Sirica dismissed as "ridiculous, frankly" the claim by McCord's attorney, Gerald Alch, that McCord had helped bug the Democrats in hopes of detecting plans of radicals for acts of violence against Republicans during the campaign. If McCord really believed that, Sirica suggested, he should have called police, the FBI or the Secret Service. Well, could McCord's defense be based on the claim that he had no criminal intent? "You may argue it," Sirica told Alch. "Whether the jury will believe you is another story."

The jury did not, finding both McCord and Liddy guilty on Jan. 30 of burglary, wiretapping and attempted bugging. At a bail hearing for the two conspirators,