Leon Jaworski
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Leon Jaworski (September 19, 1905, in Waco, Texas - December 9, 1982) was the Special Prosecutor during the Watergate Scandal. Jaworski was appointed to that position on November 1, 1973, shortly after the Saturday Night Massacre which led to the dismissal of prosecutor Archibald Cox.
During his tenure as Special Prosecutor, Jaworski was perhaps most famous for his protracted constitutional battle with the White House concerning his attempts to secure evidence for the trial of former senior administration officials on charges relating to the Watergate cover-up.
The Special Prosecutor knew that President Richard Nixon had discussed the Watergate cover-up with the accused on numerous occasions and that these conversations had been recorded by the White House taping system. Jaworksi requested tapes of sixty-four Presidential conversations as evidence for the upcoming trial. The President refused to hand them over, citing executive privilege.
After attempts to find a compromise - including supplying edited transcripts of some recordings - had failed, Jaworski subpoenaed them. The White House appealed on two grounds: firstly, that the Special Prosecutor did not have the right to sue the President; and secondly, that the requested materials were privileged presidential conversations. Aware that an important constitutional issue was at stake, and unwilling to wait any longer, Jaworski asked the Supreme Court to take the case directly, bypassing the Court of Appeals.
On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that the Special Prosecutor did have the right to sue the President; and that "the generalized assertion of [executive] privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial". The President was forced to hand over the unedited tapes to Jaworski, including one of a very compromising discussion on June 23rd, 1972, (known as "the smoking gun" tape). The President resigned in early August.
Jaworski resigned as Special Prosecutor on October 25, 1974, once the cover-up trial had begun.
[edit] Background
A child of Polish and Austrian immigrants, he became the youngest person ever admitted to the Texas bar (1925), and in 1931 he joined the Houston firm that became Fulbright & Jaworski.
During World War II, he prosecuted one of the largest Army court-martials of that war, the case of Guglielmo Olivotto, an Italian prisoner of war, who died with a noose around his neck, lynched at a military post on Puget Sound in 1944. Twenty-eight African-American soldiers were indicted and convicted. After publication of a book by Seattle journalist Jack Hamann On American Soil that reported grievous prosecutorial misconduct by Jaworksi in October of 2007 all convictions were overturned and honorable discharges were granted.[1]
The board found that the court-martial was flawed, that the defense was unjustly rushed and that Jaworski, a young lieutenant colonel at the time, had important evidence that he did not share with defense lawyers.[2]
During the Second World War, Jarworski also prosecuted the Johannes Kunze murder trial, where five German prisoners of war were accused of beating to death a fellow prisoner for being a "traitor".[3]
Subsequently, he served as a war crimes prosecutor in Germany. He declined to participate in the Nuremberg Trials on grounds that the prosecution there was based on laws that did not exist at the time of the culpable acts.[4] He rose to the rank of colonel, and subsequently, in his law firm, he was commonly addressed as "Colonel Jaworski."
He was a friend of President Lyndon Johnson. In the 1960 Presidential election, Jaworski represented Johnson in the lawsuit filed to stop Johnson from running for the US Senate from Texas at the same time he was running for Vice-President. Jaworski won. However, Jaworski did not always support Democratic candidates. He supported Richard Nixon, contributed to George H.W. Bush in his run for the Presidency in 1980, and after Bush conceded the nomination he became Treasurer of Democrats For Reagan during the 1980 election.
Having been convinced of his integrity, in 1980 Mr. Jaworski aided former Nixon staffer Egil "Bud" Krogh, whom he had sent to prison in 1973, in his request to be reinstated to the Washington State Bar.
[edit] References
- ^ A Staten Island Trombonist Breaks a 64-Year Silence About a Military Race Riot Village Voice 22 April, 2008
- ^ *New York Times
- ^ *Tulsa World Centential
- ^ Jaworski, Leon. Confession and Avoidance:A Memoir. with Mickey Herskowitz. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979, pp. 112-116.
