Richard Kleindienst

Richard Kleindienst (1923-2000), American lawyer and, during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974), the attorney general who led initial investigations of the burglary of Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex by operatives of the Nixon reelection campaign. The Watergate scandal eventually led Nixon to resign the presidency.

Richard Gordon Kleindienst was born in Winslow, Arizona. He attended the University of Arizona and served in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945). He returned to college after the war, earning a bachelor's degree and graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1947. He earned a law degree from Harvard in 1950 and returned to Arizona, where he became a partner in a Phoenix law firm. He was elected to the Arizona state house in 1953, serving one two-year term. He chaired the Arizona Republican Party from 1956 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1963, and then became the national organizer for the 1964 presidential campaign of fellow Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater. Kleindienst held the same position in Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign before becoming deputy campaign manager. After Nixon was elected president, Kleindienst was appointed deputy attorney general and became closely associated with the Nixon administration's “law and order” stance.

Nixon appointed Kleindienst attorney general in 1972 after John Mitchell resigned from the position to head the president's reelection campaign. Kleindienst began the Justice Department's investigation into the Watergate affair and came under widespread criticism for failing to follow all of the leads in the case. Kleindienst resigned in a Nixon administration “housecleaning” on April 30, 1973, which also included the resignations of White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and the firing of White House counsel John Dean. In May 1974 Kleindienst pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of withholding information from a Senate committee investigating a case involving International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT). The case included allegations of campaign contributions being given in exchange for favorable settlement of an antitrust suit against ITT.

Kleindienst was indicted in 1981 on 14 counts of perjury in a case involving the alleged theft of $7 million in Teamsters Union health and welfare funds. He was accused of lying under oath about his knowledge of the criminal activities of a client he had represented in 1976. Two counts were dismissed, and he was acquitted on the remaining 12 charges that same year. In 1985 Kleindienst published Justice: Memoirs of an Attorney General.