Title When One Stood Alone Author Donald J. Farinacci Synopsis John J. Sirica's Battle Against the Watergate Conspiracy A Tale of Moral Courage Richard M. Nixon rode into the presidency in 1968 on a promise to end the Vietnam War. He soon learned that he would be no more successful in extracting America from the mire of Vietnam than was his discredited predecessor, Lyndon Baines Johnson. By firmly voicing his skepticism from the bench, Sirica set the tone of the trials. The media immediately picked up on his suspicions and reduced the prosecution's theory of the case to ridicule. Biography The author, Donald J. Farinacci, J.D., a Vietnam era veteran, is a partner with the New York City law firm, Fischbein Badillo Wagner Harding LLP. As a young lawyer in the early 1970s, he received an insider's view of the workings of government when he served first as assistant counsel to the New York State Commission to Evaluate the Drug Laws and then as Counsel to the New York State Senate Committee on Crime and Correction. This blending of actual experience in government, with the lessons of Watergate, during an intensely formative period of his legal career, instilled in the author a life-long fascination with the machinations of Watergate and its larger implications for the soul of America and the survival of America's unique democratic system. At the time of Watergate, the author had little courtroom experience. Now, however, after a thirty-two year career in private law practice, both in and out of court, Mr. Farinacci's admiration for courage in the courtroom has reached its zenith. His interest in the improvement of the judicial system has led him to seek opportunities for participation in judicial and legal reform. Specifically, he served on the Nassau County Bar Association ad hoc committee on legal reform, which led to his appointment as Chair of the Association's standing Committee on the Profession and the Courts. One can forgive the author for seeing parallels between his own early career and that of John J. Sirica, both of which were marked by initial forays into government followed by solo private law practice, with all the rigorous tests the vocation entails. These include the struggle for financial survival, while one scrambles to build a client base; the demands of sixty-hour work weeks, as he finds himself in a battle with the legal establishment to prove his legitimacy, and with himself to prove his mettle; all the while endeavoring not to lose sight of the fact that law is a higher calling, that precious personal and societal values are at stake and that temptations to compromise one's moral and ethical standards must be resisted at all costs. Mr. Farinacci, having reached a mature plateau in his career, noted that his admiration for those who did meet the tests had deepened over the years. From a vantage point, thirty plus years after Watergate, the author found himself more intrigued than ever by how Watergate is the quintessential historical paradigm for vice versus virtue in law and government. What made the subtext of Watergate so singularly engaging to the author was the stark contrast in that time of national moral crisis between those who rose to the occasion and those who doomed themselves to abject failure. Obviously, a lawyer or public servant would sooner identify with Judge Sirica, Sam Dash, Elliot Richardson or Leon Jaworsky, than with the many lawyers and government officials of the Watergate era who disgraced themselves and wound up in prison. Hence, the author's main theme - moral courage, and its many attributes; and how America and the World require it now more than ever during this age of cultural decline, political polarization and threatened peril from terrorism. Mr. Farinacci is married, has three children and two grandchildren, and lives on Long Island.

Book Details Price: $20.99 ISBN: 9781413479065 Dimensions: 5.4 x 8.3 Pages: 112 Quantity: