Robert Odle

Robert C. Odle, Jr. is an American lawyer, based in Washington, D.C..

He studied law at Michigan State University, where he graduated in the class of 1969. He served as Director of Administration ("office manager") for the Committee to Re-Elect the President during the 1972 presidential election, and was the first witness questioned by the Watergate Committee.[1]

Odle testified about contact he had with James McCord, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and G. Gordon Liddy, and particularly H. R. Haldeman and Attorney General John Mitchell. He witnessed document shredding and took into safekeeping a file which, he testified, he did not know the contents of, that described the activities of the White House Plumbers.[2]

Odle, Jr. has worked for the Department of Energy, and was a member of the Task Force for Legal Equality of Women, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

In 2004, the watchdog group Public Citizen questioned the ethicality of a contribution Odle made in his wife's name to the legal defense fund of Tom DeLay, but DeLay declined to return the money.[3] In 2005, the timing of Odle's hiring as a lobbyist for Enron was questioned by Sen. Harry Reid among others.[4]

He is a member of the Republican National Lawyers' Association.

He currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia.