Leonard Garment, Brooklyn-born Jewish lawyer, has been entrusted with the awesome responsibility of representing the White House in all aspects of the Watergate case. President Nixon announced today. Garment, who has been a special consultant to the President regarding minorities and civil rights for almost four years, undertook his additional duties immediately after meeting with Nixon at Camp David this morning. The President said that Garment will represent the White House “in all matters relating to the Watergate investigation and will report directly to me.”
White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler reported Garment’s appointment and announced that Elliot Richardson has been named Attorney General succeeding Richard Kleindienst who resigned abruptly today together with top White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and White House Counsel John Dean Garment was given the title of Acting White House Counsel succeeding Dean.
The appointment of Garment establishes a Jewish counsellor in the third vital point of the investigation regarding the break-in of Democratic Party campaign headquarters last June at the Watergate building near the State Department and the Kennedy Center by persons linked to the Nixon administration and the Committee to Reelect the President.
Samuel Dash, former Philadelphia District Attorney, is the chief counsel for the Senate’s Select Senate Committee on Presidential campaign activities. Sen. Sam J. Ervin (D.N.C.) is the chairman. In the Federal grand jury investigation handling the Watergate criminal proceedings the chief government prosecutor is Earl Silbert. His principal assistant is Seymour Glanzer, Silbert was in charge of the government’s case against the seven original Watergate defendants. All were convicted.
Silbert was referred to by Kleindienst in a comment that was taken as an anti-Semitic slur early this year and Rep. Lester Wolff (D.N.Y.) demanded and received an apology from Kleindienst at a meeting arranged by the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington representative David Brody. Wolff later said that Kleindienst graciously explained the incident and it was considered a closed matter.
Garment, born May 11, 1924, attended Brooklyn College and Law School between 1942-1949. He was a member of Nixon’s law firm in New York–Mudger Rose, Guthrie and Alexander–when the President selected him as a consultant in July 1969. In his area of responsibility concerned with minorities and civil rights, Garment frequently met with Jewish leaders regarding Soviet Jewry and other special Jewish concerns.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
