Leonard Garment

As White House counsel, Mr. Garment played a central role in some of Watergate’s highest drama, discouraging Nixon from destroying White House tapes, pushing unsuccessfully for the president’s early resignation in 1973, and recommending to his successor, Gerald R. Ford, that Nixon be pardoned. Long after many other Watergate figures had gone to prison or faded into ignominy, Mr. Garment remained one of official Washington’s most sought-after lawyers. He went to Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn College and Brooklyn Law School, where he was editor of the law review and graduated first in his class in 1949. He paid for part of his college education by playing tenor saxophone and clarinet in Woody Herman’s band, and in Henry Jerome’s band he teamed with an aspiring young economist named Alan Greenspan, also on saxophone. Mr. Garment signed with the New York law firm of Mudge, Stern, Williams & Tucker and became a partner in 1957. In 1963, the former vice president — fresh off his failed run for governor of California — joined the practice. Mr. Garment was a key adviser in Nixon’s successful presidential campaign in 1968, serving, by his own admission, as an “odds and ends” utility man: media consultant, policy adviser and talent scout. He recommended another law partner, John N. Mitchell, as campaign manager. Nixon later named Mr. Mitchell attorney general. After leaving the White House in late 1973, he worked for the United Nations on human rights issues, then returned to private practice and a position as one of Washington’s “power lawyers.” Mr. Garment’s first wife, the former Grace Albert, a writer for the daytime soap opera “The Edge of Night,” was found dead in 1977 in a Boston hotel room. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide. His daughter Sara Elizabeth Garment died in 2011 at 51, and a son, Paul, a professional clarinetist, died in 2012 at age 50. Besides his daughter Ann, a physician, he is survived by his wife, the former Suzanne Bloom, a lawyer and editor, whom he married in 1980; a brother, Martin; and a grandson.