Robert Mardian, lawyer for President Nixon’s re-election committee, dies at 82

AP Worldstream; Jul 21, 2006

Robert Mardian, an attorney for President Richard Nixon’s re-election
committee whose conviction in the Watergate scandal was overturned,
has died. He was 82.

Mardian died of complications from lung cancer Monday at his vacation
home in Southern California, said his son Robert.

The attorney long denied helping conceal the Nixon administration’s
involvement in the break-in and attempted bugging of the Democratic
National Headquarters office at the Watergate complex.

Nixon had named him head of the Internal Security Division of the
Justice Department in 1970, but Mardian left two years later to work
for Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, known as CREEP.

He represented the committee when the Democratic National Committee
sued shortly after the 1972 break-in.

The government accused Mardian of interfering in its investigation
when he interviewed a number of key figures in the Watergate break-in,
said Arnold Rochvarg, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore
and author of the 1995 book "Watergate Victory: Mardian’s Appeal."

"Mardian’s defense always was he was doing this as the attorney for
CREEP in the civil suit," Rochvarg told the Los Angeles Times. "The
government’s position was he was talking to everybody as a conspirator
to obstruct justice."

In March 1974, Mardian and six others were indicted; five went
to trial.

Mardian was charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

During the trial, Mardian contradicted much of the testimony against
him, including witnesses who said he was key to getting the Watergate
burglars released from jail before the administration’s connections
were discovered.

Mardian, who was golfing on the West Coast when he learned of the
break-in, said that was impossible given his location and the time
difference.

In October 1976, a federal appeals court ruled Mardian should have
been tried separately. Rather than retrying Mardian, the special
prosecutor dropped the charge.

The youngest son of Armenian immigrants, Mardian was born Oct. 23,
1923, in Pasadena. His studies at University of California, Santa
Barbara were interrupted when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and
he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve.

After the war, Mardian graduated with honors from law school at
University of Southern California and entered private practice.

Mardian served as western regional director for Sen. Barry Goldwater’s
presidential campaign in 1964 and chairman of Ronald Reagan’s advisory
committee during the 1966 California gubernatorial campaign. Two
years later, Mardian was the Western states co-chairman for Nixon’s
presidential campaign.

After Nixon’s inauguration, Mardian became general counsel to what
was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and was
later appointed to be executive director of the Cabinet Committee
on Education.

After leaving government work in 1972, Mardian moved to Phoenix to
join his family’s construction business. He retired in 2002.