19 Facts About Maurice Stans

Maurice Hubert Stans was an American accountant, civil servant, and political organizer who served as the 19th United States Secretary of Commerce from 1969 to 1972.

Maurice Stans served as the finance chairman for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, working for the re-election of Richard Nixon.

Maurice Stans pleaded guilty to five counts for technical violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act that were revealed during the larger investigation into the Watergate scandal.

Maurice Stans's father was the only child of Jan Hendrik Stans and Maria Catharina Crijns, a Belgian couple who immigrated to the United States in 1880.

Maurice Stans worked at a local foundry before traveling to Chicago to find work with friend, Otto F Schultz.

Maurice Stans was a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in New York, Ohio and Virginia.

Maurice Stans was President of the American Institute of Accountants from 1954 to 1955 and won the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to the Profession in 1954.

Maurice Stans was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame in 1960.

Maurice Stans later served as US deputy postmaster general from 1955 to 1957, in the Dwight Eisenhower administration.

Maurice Stans served as deputy director of the Bureau of the Budget from 1957 to 1958, and director of the Bureau of the Budget from 1958 to 1961, still under Eisenhower.

Maurice Stans joined the Nixon administration as secretary of commerce from 1969 to 1972.

In 1961, Maurice Stans was one of the founders of the African Wildlife Foundation.

In mid-February 1972, Maurice Stans resigned as the secretary of commerce to chair the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.

Maurice Stans denied any knowledge of what the money was used for, only that it was authorized to be spent.

On March 12,1975, Maurice Stans pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the reporting sections of the Federal Election Campaign Act and two counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions.

The convictions were related to improperly giving campaign funds to G Gordon Liddy, though Stans insisted that his guilt ended there and that he was not aware of Liddy's plan to use the money for what became the Watergate break in.

Maurice Stans later authored a book, The Terrors of Justice: The Untold Side of Watergate, in which he detailed his side of the Watergate story.

Maurice Stans wrote a book called "One of the Presidents' Men: Twenty Years With Eisenhower and Nixon" about his time serving in the Cabinets of two different presidential administrations.

Maurice Stans died at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, on April 14,1998, at age 90, from complications of congestive heart failure.