Page 68 - ACTL_Win23

Mitchell, former White House chief of staff H.R. Halde- man, former domestic affairs adviser John D. Ehrlichman and former White House counsel John Dean. On August 8, 1974, under the mounting pressure from Watergate, Presi- dent Richard M. Nixon became the first and only U.S. Pres- ident to resign his office.
But when Cox was appointed special counsel, the investi- gation that led to the later convictions was 90% complete. Earl delivered a ninety-page memorandum to Cox that served as the blueprint for future prosecution. The memo included the names of twenty-seven targets for possible indictment. One of them was President Nixon. It was Earl and his prosecution team who got John Dean and Jeb Magruder to implicate Mitchell, Bob Haldeman and Ehrlichman and ultimately – after Dean was denied im- munity from prosecution – Nixon.
It might have been easy to have coasted on that accomplish- ment, but not Earl. He became interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in January 1974 and was later officially nominated, ironically enough, by Nixon. But the
nomination encountered resistance in the Senate, where Earl was asked to defend the slow speed of the Watergate prosecution. He was renominated twice by President Ger- ald Ford before his ultimate confirmation in October 1975.
During Earl’s term as U.S. Attorney, the Office handled high-profile cases such as the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading opponent of then-Chilean dictator Au- gusto Pinochet, the brutal murder of a family of Hanafi Muslims, and the white-collar fraud and bribery prose- cutions of real estate developer Dominic Antonelli and D.C. public official Joseph Yeldell.
At his memorial service, Earl’s former partner and current D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves commented that, during Earl’s time as Watergate prosecutor and tenure as U.S. Attorney, he never held a press conference. Earl didn’t think it was appropriate.
Winston Churchill once described Clement Atlee as “a modest man, who has much to be modest about.” Earl was a modest man, although he had much he could have boasted about. He never publicized himself; he never boasted. He didn’t need to, but even if he might have, he had no such inclination.
Earl was appropriately dubbed, and will always be remembered, as the Chief Watergate Prosecutor.
67 JOURNAL