Samuel Dash


Samuel Dash (February 27, 1925 – May 29, 2004), a native of Camden, New Jersey, a co-chief counsel along with Fred Thompson for the Senate Watergate Committee during the Watergate scandal. Dash became famous for his televised interrogations during the Congressional hearings on Watergate.

Two decades later, Dash was again in the news after resigning his post as ethics adviser to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After working for the investigation for four years, Dash resigned to protest Starr's appearance before the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. Dash felt that Starr was acting as an "aggressive advocate" instead of an impartial investigator.

Dash was a law professor at Georgetown University for nearly 40 years where he taught criminal procedure. Shortly before his death, he published The Intruders: Unreasonable Searches and Seizures from King John to John Ashcroft, which discusses the risks to freedom in modern society, particularly in the wake of the PATRIOT Act.

Samuel Dash was born in Camden to Joseph and Ida Dash, Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. Dash died in Washington, D.C. of congestive heart failure, aged 79, on the same day as Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor for the Watergate scandal.

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