12 Facts About Samuel Dash

Samuel Dash was chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee during the Watergate scandal.

Samuel Dash was born in Camden, New Jersey, to Joseph and Ida Samuel Dash, Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.

Samuel Dash graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia and went on to study at Temple University.

Samuel Dash interrupted his studies when at the age of 18, with the United States engaged in fighting World War II, Dash enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served as a bombardier navigator, flying missions over Italy.

Samuel Dash then studied at Harvard Law School where he gained his degree in 1950.

In 1955, Samuel Dash became a district attorney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Samuel Dash became a law professor at Georgetown University, where he was working when he was asked to help United States Senator Sam Ervin, head of the Senate Committee charged to investigate the possible involvement of President Richard Nixon in the burglary of offices used by the Democratic Party at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, and the effort to obstruct investigation of the burglary.

The university gave Samuel Dash a leave of absence to do this work, and he became the committee's chief counsel.

Two decades later, Samuel Dash was again in the news, after resigning his post as ethics adviser to independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Samuel Dash thought that Starr was acting as an "aggressive advocate" instead of an impartial investigator.

Samuel Dash returned to Georgetown, where, for nearly 40 years, he taught criminal procedure.

Samuel Dash died in Washington, DC, of congestive heart failure, aged 79, on the same day as Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor for the Watergate scandal.