I had not been long in my temporary position of acting attorney general when it became obvious that we would need to find a new special prosecutor to complete the Watergate investigation. Strictly speaking, we didn’t need a special prosecutor. I’m confident the individuals we had in the office possessed the demeanor and intelligence necessary to see the Watergate investigation through to its inevitable conclusion. But with the outcry over Cox’s firing reaching a fever pitch, the need for a new special prosecutor became a necessity, if only to calm everyone down.1

In our independent searches for a new special prosecutor, the White House and the Justice Department hit on Leon Jaworski’s name at about the same time. There was really no other candidate so well fitted for the job. Jaworski was a former president of the American Bar Association, and one of the first prosecutors at the war crimes trials before they moved to Nuremberg. We went through the list of other bar association presidents, but that was a fruitless enterprise. Jaworski was the one candidate suitable for the position. The others were too old for the job, lacked trial experience, or were otherwise disqualified.

Haig and I were equally enthusiastic about Jaworski, but perhaps for different reasons. Haig kept saying, “We have to get a real professional this time.” Finding a real professional was easy enough. The difficulty was finding one that the bar and the press would accept as sufficiently independent and skillful