Elliot Richardson

Elliot Lee Richardson was born on July 20, 1920, in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College (BA, 1941) and Harvard Law School (LLB, 1947, magna cum laude), then clerked for Judge Learned Hand on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Felix Frankfurter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, participating in the Normandy landings, and was wounded at Omaha Beach. He died on December 31, 1999.¹

Government Career

Richardson served as a Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General under the Eisenhower administration (1957-1959), then as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts (1959-1961). He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1964 and Attorney General of Massachusetts in 1966.¹

Under President Nixon, Richardson held four successive cabinet or subcabinet positions in rapid succession: Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1970-1973), Secretary of Defense (January-May 1973), and Attorney General of the United States (May-October 1973). As Attorney General, he appointed Archibald Cox as Watergate Special Prosecutor. On October 20, 1973 — the event subsequently known as the Saturday Night Massacre — Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also refused and was dismissed; Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the order. Richardson's resignation over the Cox firing established him as one of the prominent Republican figures of the Watergate era.¹

Under President Ford, Richardson served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1975-1976) and as Secretary of Commerce (1976-1977). He subsequently served as Ambassador-at-Large and head of the U.S. delegation to the Law of the Sea Conference under President Carter (1977-1980).¹

INSLAW Representation

Richardson was retained as outside counsel by INSLAW and Bill and Nancy Hamilton following the September 1987 bankruptcy court ruling in which Judge George Bason found that the Department of Justice had "taken, converted, stole" INSLAW's enhanced PROMIS software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit." By March 1989, Richardson was writing to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden requesting assurances that DOJ whistleblowers who cooperated with congressional investigators would face no reprisals; Biden responded through an aide, and Richardson challenged the dismissal. Richardson subsequently championed the House Judiciary Committee investigation led by Representative Jack Brooks, which ran from 1989 through September 1992 and produced House Report 102-857.²³

In congressional testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Richardson stated:

"There is simply too much to be ignored. In the case of INSLAW, there is a spreading radius of circumstantial evidence, which, at its outer reaches, entails a far more sinister kind of conspiracy than anything revealed in Watergate."²

On October 21, 1991 — ten weeks after journalist Danny Casolaro's death in Martinsburg, West Virginia — Richardson published an op-ed in the New York Times titled "A High-Tech Watergate," in which he named Earl Brian as linked to the PROMIS theft and alleged a scheme connected to the October Surprise. The op-ed also stated:

"I believe he was murdered, but even if that is no more than a possibility, it is a possibility with such sinister implications as to demand a serious effort to discover the truth."⁴

Brian subsequently filed a libel lawsuit against Richardson in New York. In 1995, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that Richardson's statements in the op-ed were constitutionally protected opinion and dismissed the suit.⁴

Richardson and INSLAW repeatedly demanded the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to investigate the matter. Instead, Attorney General William Barr appointed Nicholas J. Bua in November 1991 as a DOJ-selected special counsel. Bua's March 1993 report cleared all DOJ officials. Richardson issued a public statement characterizing the report as "remarkable both for its credulity in accepting at face value denials of complicity in wrongdoing."³

Richardson appeared on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries in a segment about Casolaro's death (Season 5, aired March 10, 1993), identified as "Former Attorney General and INSLAW Attorney," where he restated his view that the circumstances of Casolaro's death warranted a more thorough investigation than had been conducted.²

The Riconosciuto Affidavit

In March 1991, Richardson, acting in his capacity as INSLAW's counsel, transmitted to Michael Riconosciuto an affidavit for signature to be filed in federal court in connection with INSLAW's pending Motion for Limited Discovery. Riconosciuto signed the affidavit on March 21, 1991, alleging that he had modified PROMIS under direction from Earl Brian and that DOJ contracting officer Peter Videnieks had attempted to dissuade him from cooperating with the House Judiciary Committee. Riconosciuto was arrested on methamphetamine charges eight days after signing. Richardson characterized the rapid timing of the arrest as consistent with official intimidation of a cooperating witness.²