Maximum John

TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT by John J. Sirica Norton; 391 pages; $15

Boxing had always seemed more enticing to him than a career in law. He skipped college and twice dropped out of law school. Even after passing the bar, he offered so little promise that for a year no law firm would hire him. After an undistinguished career, he became a federal judge because of his capacities as a political fund raiser. Such are hardly the credentials for stature. But when the nation faced its gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War, he provided a fresh instance of the American dictum: In times of extremity, men grow into their roles.

The man was John Joseph Sirica, and it is a mark of his integrity that he waited so long to present Watergate from the other side of the bench. Perhaps he waited too long. After all the President's men have told their tales, there would seem to be few revelations left. Yet, in this appealing account, Sirica does set the record straight, not only about the judicial words but also about the sentences.

Sirica's unorthodox background probably helped him deal with the nation's unprecedented crisis. The son of a luckless Italian immigrant, he confesses that he sometimes lived beyond the law. Hired as a mechanic's helper in Washington, D.C., the pudgy 14-year-old discovered a way to make his job easier. Instead of completely cleaning out grease caps on the automobiles of 1918, he merely scraped off the top layer of old grease and applied a little new. Irate owners complained that their cars still squeaked. Before he could be fired, Sirica quit.

There followed a period of drifting, to California, to Florida, but always back to Washington. He discovered how to use his fists, hung around with pugs (Jack Dempsey is still his best friend), boxed as an amateur and as a sparring partner. To his mother's horror, he accepted a bout as a professional, and won. But haunted by his father's nomadic, and futile, search for economic security, he returned again and again to law school, until on the last try he earned a degree.

As a rare Republican "ethnic" in the mid-'50s, Sirica caught the eye of such powerful politicians as Leonard Hall and William Rogers. They cleared the way for him to become a federal district judge in April of 1957, after he had campaigned twice for Ike and Nixon. Sixteen years later, he glowered down at the likes of G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and James McCord, who in March of 1973 appeared in Sirica's chambers with his famous letter of accusation.

The world is familiar with Sirica's reading of that letter in open court. What it does not know is that below the dead-pan was an emotion that approached glee. "This is it," Sirica allowed himself to think in prosecutorial tones. "This is what I've been hoping for." As it turned out, members of the Administration were not the only ones on trial. Sirica's unbridled temper and his less than brilliant reputation were large targets for the defense attorneys. But the old pugilist had not forgotten how to feint and duck. He remained imperturbable, retired to a neutral corner, and saw every major decision upheld by the appeals courts.

Even now, however, the man refuses to lower his fists. In a cascade of speculation, Sirica declares that if Nixon had refused to surrender the tapes, he would have been held in contempt. Fines of $25,000 to $50,000 would have been levied every day. In the book's most belligerent section, the judge wishes that Nixon had indeed been indicted and gone to trial. If convicted in Sirica's court, he would have been sentenced to jail, regardless of the psychological consequences to the country. The judge, whose penchant for stiff sentences earned him the sobriquet "Maximum John," also regrets that he had to rule against public release of the White House tapes. They were, he concludes, "the most intimate and most damning conversations conducted in the Nixon White House."

Save for these disclosures. To Set the Record Straight adds little to history, and the jaded onlooker may be inclined to agree with Novelist Arnold Bennett that "the price of justice is eternal publicity." Still, the man justifies the autobiography. For in its pages, Sirica, 75, provides an ironic paradigm. The obscure childhood, the wayward parent, the indomitable will, the tense trials and, at last, the public recognition: we have been here before. Until 1973 that was the Richard Nixon story as told by Richard Nixon. It is not surprising that Sirica voted for him. What remains reassuring is that the judge ruled against the President he once admired. Why? The claim that animates his story is simply: "I think I did my job as best I could. I think I did my duty as a citizen and as someone fortunate enough to hold a position of public responsibility..."

On the record, that statement appears to be, well, unimpeachable. Case dismissed.

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