Anybody who lived through Watergate remembers the young attorney: Jill Wine-Banks (then Wine Volner). She was the sole female prosecutor on the federal government’s Watergate trial team.
Her cross examination of President Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, blew open the federal government’s case that led to Nixon’s 1974 resignation. It’s fair to say that this young lawyer, brilliant and relentlessly hard-working, contributed significantly to helping the nation avoid a devastating constitutional impasse almost 50 years ago.
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In “The Watergate Girl,” Wine-Banks’ new book, she unravels the political scandal from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate offices, the development of the actual impeachment articles in preparation for a Senate trial that would never happen. However, the federal government still convicted Nixon’s top aides and co-conspirators.
The story is fascinating and breathless and intimate. Wine-Banks supplies readers with direct and unfaltering insights. We are made to feel we are there; that we are a respected part of history, and that we are privy to knowing the characters and Wine-Banks personal life.
Born in Chicago to a warm Jewish immigrant family, Wine-Banks had a happy childhood with her brother and sister. She attended public school, studied ballet and piano, “enjoyed boys” and was enchanted with the idea she would become a journalist. Her heroes were Anthony Lewis, Nancy Dickerson and Swampscott’s Lesley Stahl. Wine-Banks was shy but never afraid to take action and do what she wanted. Her father and mother imbued her with a deep sense that she could achieve whatever she sets out to do.
Wine-Banks never started out as a conscious “feminist.” Yet, her career kicked off as the sole female prosecutor in the organized-crime unit of the United States Department of Justice. She would go on and become the U.S. Army’s first female general counsel; Illinois’ first female solicitor general and deputy attorney general, and the American Bar Association’s first female executive director – all before she began an international business career for Motorola and served as a corporate leader for Maytag.
In 2001, Wine-Banks became chief executive officer of Winning Workplaces, a non-profit designed to help small and midsize businesses to be better working places on the model of its working company founders company, FelPro. Two years later, she joined the Chicago Public Schools as chief officer for career and technical education.
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Now, she is the living her college dream as a journalist. She is a legal analyst for MSNBC and is co-host for Intergenerational Politics and #SistersInLaw Podcasts.
Wine-Banks’ love for people and intuitive ability to assess situations and character has served her well. She is uncompromisingly interesting as a woman who had to “go it alone” in her early years in the law. “The Watergate Girl” recounts a press that called her “the miniskirt lawyer” and described Watergate Judge Joseph Sirica, who undoubtedly held her in high-esteem, as reverting to sexist comments when uncomfortable. She handled this with calm and confidence although feeling the sting of being treated as less than her male peers. Wine-Banks had to suffer these indignities without becoming “shrill” as she recognized that anything else would be labeled as “bitchy or too aggressive and would be counterproductive.”
Wine-Banks understood a lawyer must invite trust. She has conducted her life with a creed of authenticity. When I asked her why she provided so much information about her first husband and their failed marriage, she explained, “That is who I am.” She was trapped and stayed in the marriage out of a sense of loyalty and had to challenge her own integrity to be able to live a better life. Her hope is another woman reading “Watergate Girl” will benefit from her experience. She is able to enjoy the very happy marriage she has cherished with Michael Banks, her second husband of 41 years whom she married in 1980.
Wine-Banks is an open, friendly and brilliant lawyer and commentator. It is her “menchkeit” that informs her career and book. Her memories are “on point.” It’s not insignificant Wine-Banks’ husband Michael gave her a pair of “on-point” toe shoes for her 40th birthday – and she used them! This is testament to the humor and acknowledgement of a true American treasure.
Wine-Banks is not afraid of emotion. In our conversation, we moved from her pain over her first marriage to the freedom and joy of her second marriage. This is crucial to how she writes about each of the long list of Watergate characters. A particularly moving story within a story is her decision to present Woods as a more complete person than as the witness who wasn’t forthright and who became defensive.
Years after the infamous gap of 18 minutes and 30 seconds in Nixon’s tapes that seemed to make Woods the laughing stock of America, Wine-Banks conjured great compassion. Wine-Banks tried to speak with Wood’s friends and colleagues but was shut down until after the book was published. She got a call from Wood’s grand nephew who was pleased to help “flesh out” a more human and rounded portrayal of this woman of history.
On the state of affairs in the United States, Wine-Banks said she fears we “are still facing an existential threat to our democracy. Trump was and still is much more dangerous than Nixon.”
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We are experiencing the proximate cause of his actions “to stop democracy in action” by inciting the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, with intent of stopping the Electoral College count. “Trump is a clear and present danger,” she adds, and we must stay vigilant.
The former prosecutor in Wine-Banks believes President Donald Trump, his son, Donald Trump, Jr., his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and others should have been arrested and indicted for the attack. Wine-Banks’ knowledgeable evaluation is chilling: She agrees with the very-able impeachment managers’ controversial decision not to call witnesses in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Justice will be served as investigations and potential criminal charges are brought against Trump. The ongoing congressional hearings into what transpired on Jan. 6 and Trump’s involvement has been unusually bi-partisan.
Trump’s second impeachment carried similarities to and marked differences from the Watergate trail. During the recent Senate trial in February, Wine-Banks acted as a legal and political analyst and guide to MSNBC viewers. She recognized in Sen. Mitch McConnell’s speech after the vote to acquit the former president: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he’s in office. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”
As Wine-Banks put it: “McConnell left the door open (for Trump) to be criminally prosecuted. Just as the Watergate ‘Road Map’ led from impeachment to indictment for Nixon so will today’s Road Map take Trump from potential indictment to conviction.” This – combined with the recent Supreme Court decision giving New York prosecutors access to Trump’s taxes – promises another avenue of accountability and possible reckoning.
“McConnell’s speech provides the reverse: Trump may have acquittal in impeachment to actual criminal conviction in the justice system,” she said.
Nobody is in a better position to predict this than is Jill Wine-Banks.
On Monday, March 22 at 7p.m., Wine-Banks will be featured on an-all female panel on a Women’s History Month program organized by the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore. Please go to jccns.org (or contact [email protected]). The event is co-sponsored by Congregation Shirat Hayam, Hadassah Northeast, Jewish Women’s Archive, Worcester JCC and Vilna Shul.
Reach Ina Resnikoff, the Swampscott Reporter’s weekly columnist, at [email protected].
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