ROBERT MARDIAN was involved in the Watergate scandal from the beginning. As President Nixon’s assistant attorney-general, he was given the task of leading the federal prosecution against those responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers. The White House reaction to the publication of the papers, a secret government study of US involvement in the Vietman War, marked the start of the Nixon Administration’s abuse of power, including burglary and illegal wiretaps which led directly to Watergate.
Weeks before the break-in at the Democratic National Head quarters office in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, Mardian left the Justice Department to work as attorney for the Committee to Re-elect the President under his friend John Mitchell, the former Attorney-General who was later convicted as a Watergate conspirator. Mardian was assigned to handle the legal issues growing out of the break-in, but later testified that he knew nothing about the burglary before it happened. He also testified that Mitchell had admitted approving a budget of a quarter of a million dollars for G. Gordon Liddy, the leader of the team of burglars.
Mardian testified that he was golfing on the West Coast when he learnt of the break-in from Nixon’s campaign aide Jeb Magruder. He said he told Magruder: “Burglary is bad enough. You might get away with it. Boys will be boys. But bugging is disastrous.” Mardian, along with Mitchell, the White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s domestic policy adviser John Erlichman and the special White House counsellor Charles Colson, were jointly accused of crimes involved in the Watergate cover-up.
Prosecutors said that Mardian tried to get the Watergate burglars released before it was discovered how deeply the Nixon Administration was involved. Mardian denied all charges. All were convicted and Mardian was sentenced to between ten months and three years in prison for conspiracy in January 1975.
Later, appeal judges noted the evidence against him was “not as strong as that marshalled against his co-defendants”, and the Watergate special prosecutor dropped the charge. As assistant attorney-general, Mardian was described at the time as “one of the most visible and vocal spokesmen for law and order” in the Nixon Administration. “You talk of wearing flags in lapels? This guy would have sewn a flag on his back if they’d let him,” a Justice Department colleague told The Washington Post.
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In the Justice Department he was put in charge of reviving the internal security division, which tapped phones of reporters and launched investigations of leftwingers, alleged subversives and members of the anti- Vietnam War movements.
In The New York Times in 1973 Mardian was depicted as disappointed at being passed over for promotion, first for deputy attorney-general and then for deputy manager of the Nixon campaign. “When things are going great they ignore me,” he told the Times. “When things get screwed up, they lean on me”.
Mardian was born in Pasadena, California, in 1923. His father was an Armenian refugee from the Ottoman Empire. His brothers built up a successful construction company, and one became mayor of Phoenix, Arizona. Mardian went to a state school in Pasadena, then to Columbia University and the University of California. He served in the US Navy in the Second World War, and participated in the Republican presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
He left public life in 1972 and joined his family construction business. A year ago he told the Arizona Republic that he was shocked by the news that his colleague Mark Felt, the second-in-command at the FBI, was “Deep Throat”, the source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their coverage of Watergate. “He was in a position of authority at the FBI, investigating a matter, and the last thing in the world he should be doing is giving information to a newspaper,” Mardian said. “I just can’t imagine him doing what he did.”
Mardian is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and three sons.
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Robert Mardian, assistant US Attorney-General, was born on October 23, 1923. He died on July 17, 2006, aged 82.