Watergate Judge John Sirica Dies of Cardiac Arrest

John J. Sirica, the federal judge whose dogged pursuit of the truth in the Watergate scandal unraveled Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, died Friday. He was 88.

Sirica died at 4:30 p.m. at Georgetown University Medical Center of cardiac arrest, said hospital spokeswoman Sandra Hvidsten. She did not have further details of the judge’s illness or how long he was in the hospital.

Sirica faced down Nixon in a historic struggle between a determined court and a resisting executive, compelling the President to yield the secret White House tape recordings that ultimately led to his downfall.

The judge said later that “if he (Nixon) had been convicted in my court, I would have sent him to jail.”

The quiet, self-effacing Sirica handled the whole spectrum of Watergate in his five-year association with the case: the break-in and cover-up trials; the indictments, guilty pleas and jailing of men who were among the most powerful in the nation; and the epic tapes battles, which included trying to learn how 18 1/2 minutes of crucial conversation was erased.

Although Sirica had been in robust health, looking much younger than he was, the strain took its toll. On Feb. 5, 1976, while speaking to a law school alumni group, Sirica collapsed in the middle of a sentence with a heart attack that would have been fatal if a trained federal marshal had not given immediate emergency aid.

When he recovered, Sirica went back on the bench with a full caseload, finally going into semi-retirement as a senior judge on Oct. 31, 1977, when he had been on the bench 20 years.

President Jimmy Carter wrote Sirica that he had become “a lasting symbol of unflinching devotion to duty.”

All the major figures of Watergate paraded into Sirica’s U.S. District Court except for the biggest one of all--the President. Yet, even though Nixon resigned his office because of revelations brought into the open by the judge’s decisions, Sirica felt justice was ill-served.

“He should have stood trial,” Sirica wrote in his memoirs. “No matter how great his personal loss, Nixon did manage to keep himself above the law. He was forced to give up his office, but he was not treated the same way as the other defendants.”