Robert Mardian: Watergate lawyer whose conviction was overturned on appeal
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Jul 31, 2006
Robert Mardian taking the oath before testifying to the Senate
Watergate Committee in Washington in July 1973
Of the "Watergate Seven" advisers and aides to US president Richard
Nixon indicted in March 1974, only government lawyer Robert Mardian,
who has died of lung cancer aged 82, had his conviction overturned on
appeal. Mardian always insisted on his innocence, and a 1995 book –
Watergate Victory: Mardian’s Appeal, by Arnold Rochvarg, who worked on
the appeal team – proclaimed that appeal decision a triumph of justice.
Others disagreed. In 1972 Mardian was "coordinator" of the Committee
to Re-Elect The President, whose acronym was the tellingly apposite
Creep. When the Watergate burglars were caught at the Democratic Party
headquarters, the White House needed to prevent them being traced
back to Creep. They did well enough that Watergate was a non-issue
in Nixon’s 1972 re-election, but its pursuit by the press, and the
discovery of the White House tapes, led to Nixon’s resignation in
August 1974, the Watergate hearings and criminal charges.
Although Mardian claimed to have been unaware of the activities of the
so-called "plumbers" and not to have been involved in any cover-up,
he was convicted in January 1975 of obstruction of justice. Convicted
on more serious charges were Nixon campaign chief and former attorney
general John Mitchell, White House aides HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman,
and Gordon Strachan, and White House counsel Charles Colson, who
pleaded guilty to organising a separate break-in, at the offices
of the psychiatrist for Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon
Papers. Mardian’s defence hinged on his being at a fundraising
event in California on the night of the burglary. But Jeb Magruder,
who had been promoted over Mardian’s head as Mitchell’s number two,
testified that Mitchell had ordered Mardian to telephone G Gordon
Liddy and put the cover-up in motion.
Liddy then claimed he had been briefed by the turncoat
Magruder. However, Mardian admitted meeting Liddy three days later
to organise hush money for the burglars. He also shredded papers
linking Creep with them, but claimed he did not understand that the
White House budget for "dirty tricks and black advance" was aimed at
political opponents.
Mardian’s appeal made finer legal points. First, that as "coordinator"
for Creep, and counsel for the civil suit filed by the burgled
Democrats, his actions were covered by lawyer-client privilege, and
second, the details of his participation in the cover-up revealed in
Nixon’s infamous White House tapes were inadmissable as hearsay. But
when, in 1976, the appeal court quashed his conviction, they ruled
on far narrower grounds, that his case should have been severed from
the other defendants when his lead counsel fell ill during his trial.
Mardian’s proclaimed innocence flew in the face of his zeal, as an
assistant attorney general for internal security, for wiretapping
and prosecuting anyone, including journalists, opposed to the
Vietnam War, or indeed to Nixon. He headed the government’s team
prosecuting Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, and led
other prosecutions of dissenters while colluding with the FBI to keep
details of their own agent provocateur secret.
Like many of Nixon’s inner circle, Mardian’s zeal was cultivated in
California politics. His parents had fled the Turkish massacres of
Armenians and settled in Pasadena. His three older brothers ran a
construction business, and were drawn to rightwing politics. Mardian
graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara and
served in the navy in the second world war. There he met his wife
Dorothy. After his discharge in 1946, he took a law degree from the
University of South California and went into private practice.
Apart from a brief spell on the Pasadena school board, Mardian
stayed out of active politics until the 1964 presidential campaign of
conservative Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. His eldest brother, who
was mayor of Phoenix, was a major Goldwater backer, and Mardian became
the campaign’s regional director. He was chairman of the advisory
committee when Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966,
and in 1968 was western co-chair of Nixon’s successful presidential
campaign. Appointed general counsel to the department of health
education and welfare, Mardian came up with a plan which would
secretly relax federal guidelines on Supreme Court-ordered school
desegregation. Although it was not implemented, Mardian was appointed
head of the cabinet education committee. In 1970 he was named assistant
attorney general, though he had expected to become Mitchell’s deputy.
He left government after the 1972 election, returning to the family
construction firm in Arizona. Apart from his trial, Mardian’s only
public appearance was at John Mitchell’s funeral. He retired in 2002,
and died at his summer home in San Clemente, California, not far from
Nixon’s Western White House. He is survived by his wife and three sons.
Michael Carlson
Robert Charles Mardian, lawyer, born October 23 1923; died July 17 2006