Austin, Texas — Sept. 14, 2023
The Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin has acquired the papers of renowned lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste, who achieved national prominence in 1973 when he was selected as chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s Office. Interspersed with a long career as a defense lawyer based in Washington, D.C., Ben-Veniste continued to serve in key roles during government controversies and crises, including chief minority counsel for the Senate Whitewater Committee (1996-97) and a presidential appointee to the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission (2003-04.)
“Richard has been a key figure in some of the most significant national controversies of the last five decades,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center. “His collection adds to the center’s established strength in congressional and political history, as well as our rapidly emerging strength in American legal history.”
“In addition to open elections and the peaceful transition of power, democracy is founded on our ability to dig deep into the past as we pursue the free exchange of viewpoints and ideas. To that end, we need records and evidence, which is why I’ve donated my papers to the Briscoe Center,” said Ben-Veniste. “My career stands at that key historical intersection of law and political crisis, and it is my hope that those who use the evidence in my papers will garner a fact-based perspective on these critical events—up close and tumultuous as they were.”
Highlights of the Ben-Veniste papers center on content related to Watergate, the Whitewater affair, and the 9/11 commission. The Watergate materials include correspondence with Special Prosecutors Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski and Henry Ruth, evidence used by the prosecution team, copies of subpoenas and formal charges, transcripts, legal briefs, and personnel files. Whitewater materials include correspondence with the Clinton administration, as well as taped interviews and visual materials related to congressional hearings. The papers also include agendas, briefs and meeting notes from the 9/11 Commission’s internal meetings and public hearings, as well as copies of the draft and final report.
“Richard’s papers are an important addition to the Center’s extensive holdings documenting the Watergate affair,” Carleton noted. “Our collections include the papers of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite and CBS correspondents Morley Safer and Harry Reasoner; and the papers of journalist Jules Witcover, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, and the Newsweek Magazine Research Archive. We also house extensive photographic evidence of the Watergate affair.”
Other highlights of Ben-Veniste’s papers include annotated materials related to his books—Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (1977) and The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11 (2009)—as well as notes and correspondence related to his many media and speaking engagements, photographs and news clippings from across his career, and personal letters from members of the public in the aftermath of Watergate and the 9/11 Commission report.
A native New Yorker, Richard Ben-Veniste graduated from the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in 1960, going on to Muhlenberg College and Columbia University, where he earned a law degree. He then received an advanced law degree from Northwestern University Law School under a Ford Foundation fellowship grant. His legal career began in 1968 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York where he prosecuted organized crime and labor racketeering cases. He then became head of the Official Corruption Section when Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox recruited him to join his task force.
At 30 years of age, Ben-Veniste became one of the lead prosecutors on the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s Task Force, investigating the principal Watergate cover-up case against Richard Nixon’s top aides, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, among others. Thereafter, from 1976-1977, he was special outside counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Operations, and from 1984-1986, he chaired the District of Columbia Advisory Committee on Prison Education Reform.
In 1996, Ben-Veniste was appointed chief minority counsel of the Senate Whitewater Committee. In 2000, Ben-Veniste served as a presidential appointee to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, which led the declassification of more than 8 million pages of documents relating to World War II era war crimes. From 2003-2004, he served as one of ten commissioners on the bipartisan National Commission of Terrorist Attacks on the United States (9/11 Commission). Over the course of five decades, he has authored scores of essays published in newspapers and magazines around the world and appeared on hundreds of TV and radio programs. He was employed as a legal analyst for CNN between 2017-2019.
Richard Ben-Veniste lives with his family in Washington, DC, where he has practiced law since 1973.
The Ben-Veniste Papers are being processed and will be open for research in the near future.
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Media contact:
Erin Purdy
P: 512-947-7774
E: erin.purdy@austin.utexas.edu
About the Briscoe Center
As one of the leading historical research centers in the United States, the Briscoe Center’s essential purpose is to collect and preserve primary source material documenting American history for use in teaching and research. The center’s archives, libraries, museums and historical buildings are part of The University of Texas at Austin’s commitment to collecting, preserving and making available the evidence of the past. The center fosters public exploration of history through research services, exhibits, books, public programs and digital humanities projects inspired by archival holdings.
With the archives of more than 75 photojournalists, the Briscoe Center’s photographic collection has grown over the past two decades into a photographic archive of international importance. The collection now contains more than 8 million images and spans the period from the late 1840s to the present.
