Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman Indicted for Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
By Harlan Pryce ·
Name files containing FBI interviews and grand jury testimony detail the effort to dismantle a conspiracy to obstruct justice that reached into the Oval Office.
The American public was systematically deceived by a presidency that treated the law as an obstacle to be managed. In the windowless rooms of the District of Columbia, witnesses were pressured and suspects were cornered to pay for a conspiracy of silence.
These are the human costs of the Watergate era: the erosion of trust in the executive branch and the desperate, often coerced, testimonies of those caught in the gears of a failing cover-up. The US National Archives now holds the map of this wreckage. The archive's scope-and-content description for the "Records Relating to Pre-Trial Statements" catalogs a sprawling collection of name files that house the raw materials of a legal reckoning: FBI interviews, grand jury testimony, and testimony delivered before the Senate Select Committee.
March 1, 1974
The catalyst for these files was a specific date of legal reckoning. According to the archival description for the "Defendant Files," a group of individuals was indicted on March 1, 1974, for criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. The records list Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman among those indicted, noting that their files contain investigative correspondence and prosecution memorandums.
In the catalog's listing of these indicted individuals, the text ends abruptly, naming a "Harry R" before the entry cuts off. This gap in the description mirrors the gaps that often plague the historical record of government misconduct—a name left hanging, a person reduced to an initial in a ledger.
These individuals were not mere functionaries; they were the inner circle, the men tasked with ensuring that the truth about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters remained buried. For the victims of this conspiracy—the citizens whose privacy was violated and the officials whose careers were weaponized—the indictments represented a delayed form of consent, a forced acknowledgment that the state had operated outside its own laws.
Jencks and Brady Materials
To dismantle a conspiracy of this magnitude, the government had to employ a special counsel. By definition, a special counsel is a lawyer appointed to investigate and potentially prosecute cases where a conflict of interest exists for the usual prosecuting authority. In this instance, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) was tasked with investigating a sitting administration.
The WSPF did not just collect testimony; it had to manage the ethical and legal obligations of disclosure. The archive's catalog describes a series dedicated to "Inventories and Receipts of Jencks and Brady Materials." In the American legal system, Brady materials are pieces of evidence that the prosecution must share with the defense if they are exculpatory—meaning they might prove the defendant's innocence.
The existence of these inventories suggests a meticulously tracked process of handing over the government's secrets to the very people it was trying to imprison. For those of us concerned with the ethics of power, the "Brady" process is the only safeguard against a prosecution that chooses its own facts. When the WSPF compiled these lists, they were navigating the tension between the need for secrecy and the fundamental right of a defendant to know what evidence the state held against them.
Grand Jury Room Notebooks
While the high-level memorandums capture the strategy of the prosecution, the "Administrative Records Relating to Grand Juries" capture the logistics of the hunt. The catalog entry notes that these records were maintained by the Office of the U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia and involve three separate grand juries.
Among the items listed is a "grand jury room notebook." There is something visceral about a notebook kept in a grand jury room; it is a record of the atmosphere, the timing, and the physical presence of those being squeezed for information. It is the ledger of a room where people are forced to choose between perjury and prison.
The description also lists a WSPF organizational chart and jury records, painting a picture of a temporary government agency built for the sole purpose of auditing the crimes of its superiors. The scale of this operation—three grand juries, countless name files, and a dedicated task force—underscores the depth of the obstruction they were fighting.
Beyond the testimonies, the archive contains "Litigative Memorandums" concerning the prosecution in U.S. v. Mitchell, et al. These files include original and copy memorandums covering all aspects of the prosecution, as well as what the catalog describes simply as "working papers."
It is in those working papers—the scribbled notes, the rough drafts, the internal debates of the WSPF—where the real story of the investigation likely resides. The catalog lists them, but it does not describe their contents, leaving the nature of those internal deliberations an open question.