Richard Ben-Veniste
Commissioner

Richard Ben-Veniste is a partner in the Washington law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. He served as assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District New York, from 1968 to 1973, which included service as chief of the Special Prosecution Section from 1971 to 1973. Mr. Ben-Veniste was chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office from 1973 to 1975 and Special Outside Counsel Senate Committee on Government Operations from 1976 to 1977. From May 1995 to June 1996, Mr. Ben-Veniste was chief counsel (minority) of the Senate Whitewater Committee. Mr. Ben-Veniste received an A.B. from Muhlenberg College in 1964, an LL.B. from Columbia University Law School in 1967, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and an LL.M. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1968 under a Ford Foundation fellowship grant. He is a member of the bars of New York and the District of Columbia.

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. He is 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, DC, since 1992, when the list first appeared.

Mr. Ben-Veniste is a Presidential appointee to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, which is mandated to review and declassify secret documents relating to World War II era war crimes.