WSPF Attorneys Noted "Impressions" of Jurors in Watergate Cover-Up Trial
By Marcus Boone ·
Ordinary citizens had their personalities scrutinized by government lawyers in a high-stakes effort to secure convictions against those who lied to hide a presidential crime.
Ordinary citizens walked into a federal courtroom believing they were the neutral arbiters of the law, unaware that government lawyers were sketching psychological profiles of their characters. These people—drawn from the general population to decide the fate of the most powerful men in Washington—became subjects of study for the prosecutors who wanted them.
According to the US National Archives Catalog, the records of the Watergate Task Force contain a series titled "Records Relating to Jury Selection." This is not a collection of trial transcripts, but a roadmap of how the government curated the people who would judge the Nixon administration's inner circle. The file's catalogue entry records the existence of "information sheets on individual jurors with annotations reflecting impressions formed by Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) attorneys during questioning."
"Impressions Formed"
In the clinical language of an archival description, an "impression" is a data point. In the reality of a courtroom, it is a judgment. The WSPF attorneys were not merely checking for legal conflicts of interest or ensuring a representative cross-section of the community. They were recording how they felt about the people tasked with delivering a verdict.
The catalogue description notes that these records include "lists of prospective jurors" and "information sheets" that tracked who was rejected, who was qualified, and who finally made the cut. When a government lawyer writes an "annotation" about a citizen's personality during a high-profile political trial, the process ceases to be about impartial selection and becomes a exercise in psychological screening. The goal was to find a jury that could withstand the pressure of a presidency and the weight of a cover-up.
Charles Colson and the Inner Circle
The scrutiny of the jurors was the mirror image of the scrutiny applied to the defendants. In a related series of "Defendant Files," the archive lists the names of those indicted on March 1, 1974, for criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Among them were Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman, the architects of a system designed to shield the Oval Office from the consequences of the break-in at the Watergate complex in Foggy Bottom.
For Colson and Ehrlichman, the stakes were their liberty. For the prospective jurors, the stakes were their anonymity and their perceived neutrality. The WSPF was managing a massive evidentiary machine to ensure these men did not walk free. The archival descriptions show that the prosecution was balancing several streams of intelligence: "Witness Files" containing FBI interviews and grand jury testimony, and "Grand Jury Subpoenas Returned" by the U.S. marshal.
The Tapes and the Testimony
To secure a conviction, the WSPF needed more than just the right jury; they needed the right evidence to trigger those jurors' "impressions." The archive lists a series of "Transcripts of Presidential Tape Recordings that were Played to the Grand Jury," received via a subpoena on July 23, 1973.
These tapes were the smoking guns of the era, but the catalogue suggests the prosecution's work was far more granular. By pairing the raw evidence of the tapes with the "annotations" on the jurors, the WSPF could essentially calibrate their case. They knew who they were talking to, what those people believed, and what "impressions" the attorneys had formed about their susceptibility to the evidence. The trial was not just a legal battle; it was a managed experience.
Foggy Bottom
The Watergate complex—six buildings of residences, hotels, and offices—became the epicenter of a constitutional crisis. While the public focused on the break-ins and the hearings, the actual work of the cover-up trial happened in the quiet margins of the WSPF's paperwork.
The archival scope-and-content descriptions reveal a meticulous process of elimination. The records track the movement of citizens from "prospective" to "rejected" or "selected." We know from these catalogue entries that the government kept detailed notes on the personalities of the public, yet the specific nature of those "impressions"—the biases they feared or the traits they coveted—remains locked in the files.
Other archives, such as the US National Archives' "Records Relating to Pre-Trial Appeals" and "Records Relating to Jury Selection" (NAID 6919746), suggest a wider web of documentation regarding how the legal system handled the aftermath of the Nixon era. But the most intimate detail remains the WSPF's private thoughts on the citizens they summoned.
The catalogue entry tells us the annotations exist, but it does not tell us what the attorneys wrote about the people they rejected. The records leave open the question of how many jurors were discarded not because of a legal conflict, but because they did not fit the "impression" the government required for a conviction.