Samuel Dash: The most theatrical moment in the life of the American lawyer Samuel Dash came in July 1973. Dash, who has died at 79, was chief counsel to the US Senate committee, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin, looking into the Watergate burglaries.
Dash was examining a White House aide, Col Alexander Butterfield, about the tape-recording system in Nixon's Oval Office. Over and over again, Dash, a quiet, intense man, asked Butterfield who else had known the office was bugged. Finally Butterfield blurted out: "The president!"
There was an audible gasp in the room. Butterfield's revelation led directly to the Supreme Court decision that the president must hand over the tapes, and that decision led, in August 1974, to Nixon's forced resignation.
In 1972 Dash was one of three lawyers sent by the International League for Human Rights to investigate Lord Widgery's conduct of the Bloody Sunday inquiry. He ordered a full transcript, interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses and wrote a report challenging Widgery.
Years later, Dash remembered how a BBC reporter had called him to ask whether it was true he taught at Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution. Dash said he did. "Being a Catholic," the reporter said, "how can we give you any credibility?" Dash said Georgetown had nothing to do with his going to Northern Ireland. Anyway, he was Jewish.
In 1985 he was the first American ever to interview Nelson Mandela, then still in prison, and reported that, even then, he talked like a head of state.
After Watergate, Dash and Ervin came up with the idea of a special prosecutor for similar high-profile cases, an idea incorporated into law in 1978. He would later resign from Kenneth Starr's team investigating Clinton, claiming the latter had exceeded his mandate. He taught in Georgetown law school for nearly four decades. Before his death he saw the first copies of his new book, The Intruders: Unreasonable Searches And Seizures From King John To John Ashcroft, a study of the US constitution's prohibition on unlawful searches.
Samuel Dash: born February 27th, 1925; died June 5th, 2004