Richard Kleindienst

Richard Gordon Kleindienst /kline-DEENST/ (August 5, 1923 – February 3, 2000) was an American lawyer, politician, and a U.S. Attorney General during the Watergate political scandal.

Kleindienst was born August 5, 1923, in Winslow, Arizona, the son of Gladys (Love) and Alfred R. Kleindienst. He served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946, and attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, graduating from the latter in 1950.

From 1953 to 1954, he served in the Arizona House of Representatives; he followed that with some 15 years of private legal practice. He concurrently was Arizona Republican Party chairman from 1956 to 1960 and 1961 to 1963, and in 1964, the Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, losing the general election to Sam Goddard, 53%-47%.

Kleindienst suspended his private practice in 1969 to accept the post of Deputy Attorney General of the United States offered him by President Richard Nixon. This gave him responsibilities relating to the government'ssuit against ITT. Nixon and his aide John Ehrlichman told him to drop the case, which created an impression that they were violating their ethical obligations in favor of ITT, and that, as an attorney himself, Kleindienst was nowobligated to report these ethical lapses to the state bars in the jurisdictions involved. But in his official role as Deputy Attorney General, he also repeatedly told Congress no one had interfered with his department's handling of the case, not mentioning Nixon and Ehrlichman.

On February 15, 1972, US Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell (R) resigned effective March 1 to work in the Nixon re-election campaign and President Richard Nixon nominated Kleindienst to succeed Mitchell.After having served as Acting Attorney General for a little under three and a half months, his appointment was approved by the Senate on June 12 after an attempt to block the nomination by Ted Kennedy on the grounds of his involvement with ITT, failed.

Unknown to Kleindienst, leaders of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) had tasked Gordon Liddy with arranging various covert operations, one of which was to be a burglary of the Democratic Party National Headquarters in Washington, DC. Before dawn on a Saturday, five days after Kleindienst was sworn in, James McCord and four other burglars operating on Liddy's instructions were arrested at Watergate complex. Later in the morning Kleindienst was officially notified of the arrests. Liddy, after a phone consultation about the arrests with CREEP Deputy Director Jeb Magruder (who had managed CREEP up until March of that year, and had the most direct organizational authority over Liddy's activities), personally approached Kleindienst the same day at a private golf club in Bethesda, Maryland. Liddy told him that the break-in had originated within CREEP, and that Kleindienst should arrange the release of the burglars, to reduce the risk of exposure of CREEP's involvement. But Kleindienst refused and ordered that the Watergate burglary investigation proceed like any other case.

He resigned in the midst of the Watergate scandal nearly a year later, on April 30, 1973. This was the same day that John Dean was fired and H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman quit.

Kleindienst then returned to private practice. He joined Johnson, Hayes & Dowdall at the invitation of Richard. J. Dowdall, a long time friend, and for which he wrote in 1993, that he was "deeply appreciative" at such a "significant time." Kliendienst later moved to Prescott, Arizona, becoming an "of counsel" to Favour, Moore, WIlhelmsen and Schuyler, P.A. Additionally, in 1974, he pleaded guilty to failing to testify fully to the Senate in a pre-Watergate investigation, involving alleged favoritism shown to International Telephone & Telegraph Corp, during his testimony in his Senate confirmation hearings.

In 1982, Kleindienst was accused of having perjured himself to the Arizona Bar regarding how much he knew about a white-collar criminal he represented. He was cleared of all criminal charges brought against him.

He died at the age of 76, of lung cancer, on February 3, 2000.