Scope and Content Note
The papers of Samuel Dash (1925-2004) span the years 1748-2004, with the bulk of the material dating from 1965 to 2002. The papers are in English and are organized into the following series: Consultations and Cases , Government Investigations , Organizations and Committees , Teaching File , General Correspondence , General Office File , Speech and Engagement File , Writings File , Grand Jury File (Closed) , Top Secret , and Sensitive Compartmented Information .
The Consultations and Cases file contains material related to legal matters where Dash acted as an expert witness, mediator, lawyer, or as an ethics consultant to various legal firms, individual lawyers, and governments. Of note is his work regarding asbestos and tobacco litigation cases, United States House and Senate investigative committees, the Independent Counsel Act, the attorney general and government of Puerto Rico, Pete Rose in Rose v. Giamatti, and James J. Curran, Jr., in United States v. Curran.
The Government Investigations series includes material related to Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate Affair, murder incidents at Cerro Maravilla in Puerto Rico, the impeachment inquiry of Governor Bill Sheffield of Alaska, and the Whitewater Inquiry into Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. From 1973 to 1974, Dash served as the chief counsel and staff director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities investigating President Richard M. Nixon and his closest advisors in what became known as the Watergate Affair. Dash's files consist of legal documents, reports, newspaper clippings, photographs, and interviews. A large body of correspondence mostly from the public also contains letters from committee members and attorneys. In 1984, Dash became the special counsel to the president of the senate of Puerto Rico during a reinvestigation of the 1978 Cerro Maravilla incident where two Puerto Rican independence advocates were murdered. His files include correspondence, memoranda, interviews, as well as material related to the Freedom of Information Act request that grew into the case Senate of Puerto Rico ex rel. Judiciary Committee v. United States Department of Justice. In 1985, Dash served as the chief counsel to the Alaska state senate during its impeachment inquiry of Governor Sheffield regarding a multi-million dollar lease agreement with one of Sheffield's friends. Dash's files include correspondence, grand jury material, interviews, statements, and transcripts. From 1994 until 1998, Dash was the ethics advisor to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the Whitewater Inquiry involving the real estate dealings of President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their former associates in Arkansas. Dash and Starr also dealt with the president's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the independent counsel's recommendation that the president be impeached. His files include legal material, correspondence, letters from the public, press releases, and reports. Of note is the correspondence and newspaper clippings relating to Dash's resignation and criticism of Kenneth Starr in 1998.
The Organizations and Committees series reflects Dash's participation in a myriad of associations. Over his long membership in the American Bar Association, Dash served in the Sections of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice as well as on various standing committees. Reflected under the records of this organization is Dash's work on the issues of standards in criminal justice, criminal law, drugs, ethics, professional responsibility, model rules of professional conduct, advertising by lawyers, crime prevention, juvenile delinquency, and electronic surveillance. As director of the Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure at Georgetown University Law Center, he oversaw the Appellate Litigation Clinic and other projects encompassing criminal prosecution, drug addiction, forensic science, eyewitness identification, pretrial release, plea bargaining, offender rehabilitation, the role of prison industries, and defendant pre-arraignment. Dash's participation in the Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Circuit and in the Legal Aid Agency for the District of Columbia led to his involvement with projects studying the law and its relationship to community health services, mental disorders, and juvenile processes.
The Writings File is largely comprised of articles and the research material and drafts for two of Dash's works, Justice Denied: A Challenge to Lord Widgery's Report on “Bloody Sunday” and The Intruders: Unreasonable Searches and Seizures from King John to John Ashcroft. Justice Denied explores the inquiry by the Widgery tribunal into the shooting of twenty-seven civil rights protestors, thirteen of whom died at the scene, in Derry, Northern Ireland, by soldiers of the British First Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972. Dash's report challenges the findings of the Widgery tribunal which largely exonerated the soldiers of any wrongdoing. Further material related to this incident and Northern Ireland is located in the Organizations and Committees series under the International League for Human Rights. The Intruders, Dash's last book, concerns search and seizure law and the erosion of the protections of the Fourth Amendment and the exclusionary rule supported by articles, book excerpts, and current and historical case law. Dash's 1985 article about his interview with an incarcerated Nelson Mandela is supplemented by material in the General Office File showing Dash's continuing relationship with Mandela and South Africa.
The Teaching File contains syllabi, lecture notes, course outlines, and class lists for courses taught by Dash at Georgetown University Law Center including Criminal Justice, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Legislative Investigations, and Professional Responsibility. Further information on Dash's involvement with Georgetown University and its law school is found in the General Office File and in Organizations and Committees .
The papers are rounded out by General Correspondence comprised of both professional and personal correspondence, the General Office File containing subject files, biographical material, and appointment calendars, and the Speech and Engagement File covering Dash's career from 1961 to 2003. The Grand Jury File (Closed) contains documents removed from the Whitewater Inquiry and Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information files comprised of memoranda removed from the Watergate Affair files.