To Set the Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes, the Conspirators, the Pardon

New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1979. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. 394, [6] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Notes on Sources. Appendix (transcripts and opinions). Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. ink name & small stains to front flyleaf, large tear in front DJ. John Joseph Sirica (March 19, 1904 - August 14, 1992) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the trials stemming from the Watergate scandal. Sirica fought as a boxer in Washington and Miami in the 1920s and 1930s. He was torn between a career as a boxer and the career in law that he followed after earning a law degree and passing the bar. Boxing champion Jack Dempsey became a close friend. He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1930 to 1934. Sirica was nominated by President Eisenhower on February 25, 1957, to the District Court for the District of Columbia. He received his commission on March 28, 1957. He served as Chief Judge and a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1971 to 1974. He assumed senior status on October 31, 1977. His service ended on his death on August 14, 1992. Notably, he ruled the law banning Navy women from ships to be unconstitutional in the case Owens v. Brown. Derived from a Kirkus review: Although he denies the distinction, Judge Sirica is probably the strongest candidate for unmitigated hero status produced by the Watergate scandal, From the morning after the initial break-in to the day, five years later, that he sentenced Nixon's aides to jail, Sirica was the axis around which Watergate revolved. Sirica never attended college, going directly from high school to law school. When confronted by a sloppy prosecution of the Watergate burglars, Sirica responded with a determination that blew the scandal wide open; pointedly questioning the defendants himself, Sirica became an "activist judge," ignoring the danger of reversal by a higher court, because "I had no intention of sitting on the bench like a nincompoop and watching the parade go by." That stance was responsible for the "McCord letter" that got everything going. The rapid escalation of the scandal that followed left Sirica slightly behind at first; he was slow, he says, to awake to the full constitutional impact of his pursuit of the Nixon tapes. Because of his efforts to keep the issues public, he acknowledges a constant awareness of public opinion and his anger over the Saturday Night Massacre. He was determined to cite Nixon for contempt, he tells us, if the President had not acknowledged Sirica's tape subpoena at the last moment; he was going to levy a stiff fine of $25-50,000 a day against Nixon because "I knew the president loved money." Sirica now believes that Nixon should have been indicted after his resignation and tried so that the judicial process could run its course--and, if convicted, jailed; he is deeply disturbed that the President evaded the law. Listening to the tapes, he says, "was one of the most disillusioning experiences of my life," and he thinks they should be released to the public. In believing that the system worked, Sirica is too modest. An honest account of a determined search for justice.