White House Special Prosecution Office

The White House Special Prosecution Office, described in the account as the special Watergate prosecution force, pursued criminal cases arising from the Watergate break-in and its cover-up. By late February 1974, it had obtained guilty pleas from seven figures connected to the President’s campaign and administration; the ensuing grand-jury proceedings produced major cover-up indictments and transferred evidence concerning the President to Congress.

Investigating a widening scandal

The prosecutions grew out of an affair whose financial and organizational dimensions had become increasingly visible. Reporters traced a $25,000 cashier’s check payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg into a $114,000 deposit that included four Mexican checks; $25,000 was withdrawn four days later, and the remaining $89,000 was taken out separately. A subsequent report described more than $300,000 in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President, earmarked for sensitive political projects, with G. Gordon Liddy among those paid from the fund. Records relating to the account had been destroyed, and Hugh Sloan’s suspicions about Watergate had preceded his resignation. These disclosures supplied important context for the criminal cases, though the account does not attribute the reporters’ discoveries to the prosecution force.

The evidence pointed toward questions of authorization as well as the movement of cash. Sloan said that, beginning in 1971, he had telephoned John Mitchell at the Justice Department when money was requested; Mitchell told him to distribute it. Mitchell initially had sole authority to approve expenditures, and that authority was later passed to others, including Jeb Magruder. Sloan’s account connected the fund’s payment process to senior campaign officials, while leaving open the distinction between evidence of authorization and proof of who knew about particular illegal acts.

Pleas and parallel cases

By late February 1974, the special prosecution force had secured guilty pleas from Jeb Magruder, Bart Porter, Donald Segretti, Herbert Kalmbach, Fred LaRue, Egil Krogh, and John Dean. Their cases reflected a widening inquiry into campaign operations, political activity, and the concealment of Watergate-related conduct. Dean had told associates that he wanted to tell the grand jury everything if he could reach a deal with prosecutors; by late February, he was among those who had pleaded guilty.

The legal pressure extended beyond those individual pleas. Eight corporations and their officers had pleaded guilty to charges of making illegal contributions to the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Dwight Chapin was under indictment for perjury in Washington, while John Mitchell and Maurice Stans were on trial in New York on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. Those proceedings formed part of the broader legal landscape surrounding Watergate, although the account does not identify each as a case brought by the special prosecution force.

The cover-up indictments

On March 1, 1974, the Washington grand jury that had indicted the original Watergate burglars and conspirators returned major indictments in the cover-up case. It charged seven former White House and campaign aides—H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, John Mitchell, Gordon Strachan, Robert Mardian, and lawyer Kenneth Parkinson—with conspiracy to obstruct justice. The indictments made the alleged cover-up itself a central criminal case, extending the inquiry beyond the June 1972 break-in.

A week later, a second Washington grand jury returned indictments in the conspiracy to burglarize Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Those charged included John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, and three Cuban Americans, among them Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez, who had also been defendants in the original Watergate break-in case. The related prosecutions showed how the inquiry reached beyond the Watergate complex to other covert operations.

Presidential evidence and constitutional limits

The prosecution’s pursuit of presidential recordings brought the conflict directly to the White House. Special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed nine presidential tape recordings. After the President fired Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William D. Ruckelshaus, resigned. The President later surrendered seven tapes in response to public opinion and a court order; his lawyers said that two of the subpoenaed recordings had never existed. Information reaching the reporters indicated that one or more tapes contained deliberate erasures, a dispute that sharpened the struggle over evidence and presidential accountability.

The prosecution force also confronted the constitutional problem of indicting a sitting President. Prosecutors argued that the Constitution precluded such an indictment, and the grand jurors recommended that their report and accompanying evidence concerning the President be delivered to the House Judiciary Committee. The chief Watergate grand jury therefore sent a briefcase containing its report and evidence to Judge John Sirica for transfer to the committee. The House Judiciary Committee had begun the first inquiry in more than a century into possible presidential impeachment, exercising the House’s constitutional power to impeach. The prosecution’s work thus reached a consequential boundary: it could develop criminal cases against aides and assemble evidence bearing on the President, while the question of presidential accountability moved into Congress.