Richard Ben-Veniste

Richard Ben-Veniste was Assistant Special Prosecutor and Chief of the Watergate Task Force, and prosecuted the principal Nixon Administration defendants in the Watergate cover-up trial.  As Chief of the Special Prosecutions Section of the United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, he successfully prosecuted a wide variety of fraud, official corruption, organized crime and labor racketeering cases.  Mr. Ben-Veniste has served as Special Counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Operations and as minority Chief Counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee. Mr. Ben-Veniste is exclusively represented for lectures by Leading Authorities, Inc., based in Washington, D.C.

In 2002, Mr. Ben-Veniste was appointed to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States.  In July 2004, the 9-11 Commission issued its Report and recommendations.   Mr. Ben-Veniste is a Presidential appointee to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, which is mandated to declassify secret documents relating to World War II era war crimes.  Since 1998, the IWG has supervised the declassification of more than 8 million pages of previously classified documents.   

While in private practice, Mr. Ben-Veniste has represented clients in a broad array of white collar criminal investigations and trials including securities fraud, mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, conflict of interest, tax evasion, antitrust, false statements, bribery, foreign payments and RICO violations.  Additionally, he has been involved in a wide range of civil matters including class action securities fraud, RICO, congressional investigations, Lanham Act, breach of contract, licensing and intellectual properties, civil rights, law firm and oil and gas partnership disputes, and trade secrets litigation.  

Mr. Ben-Veniste is the co-author of Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (Simon & Schuster), and has been a guest lecturer at numerous law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Georgetown and Fordham.  During the Congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, Mr. Ben-Veniste was NBC's on-air legal consultant, and has been a frequent commentator on current affairs involving the intersection of law and politics.   

Mr. Ben-Veniste has been listed in Who's Who in America since 1975, The Best Lawyers in America since 1983, and Washingtonian Magazine's Top Lawyers in Washington, D.C., since 1992, when the list first appeared. Mr. Ben-Veniste received his J.D. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  Following his graduation from Columbia he was the recipient of a Ford Foundation  Fellowship at Northwestern University Law School, where he earned his LL.M. degree.