Following his defeat, Watkins served briefly in 1959 as a consultant to Interior Secretary Fred Seaton. In 1960 President Eisenhower appointed him to the Indian Claims Commission where he rose to the position of chairman and later its chief commissioner. In 1967 Watkins retired to write his memoirs and two years later his book was published. Entitled Enough Rope, it detailing his activities of the Senate Select Committee relating to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Watkins died 1 September 1973 in Orem, Utah at the age of eighty-nine.

See: Arthur V. Watkins, Enough Rope (1969).

Patricia L. Scott