‘The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street Over California’s Ancient Redwoods’
by David Harris
Times Books, $25
California’s redwood forests began growing more than 2,000 years ago – centuries before Columbus set sail, before the Dark Ages began. Neither Wall Street, nor its famed takeover artist Michael Milken, remotely existed.
Yet by some curious twist two millennia later, the fate of these ancient forests somehow ended up the subject of a highly leveraged hostile takeover and a classic battle between corporate America and its environmental antagonist, Earth First!
The Pacific Lumber Company, operated by the Murphy family in the tiny Northern California town of Scotia since 1904, seemed in its prime a highly unlikely target of environmental protests. It was notable not only for its huge stands of virgin old-growth redwoods, but also for its relatively benign approach to forestry. Long before it was fashionable, the company abandoned clear-cutting, instituted selective logging and limited the total cut to the growth during the same year – in other words, sustained forestry.
All that came to a rather screeching halt in 1985, when the firm came to the attention of a Texas-based conglomerate, Maxxam Inc., and Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz. To Hurwitz, Pacific Lumber was grossly undervalued: All one needed to do was borrow money to finance a takeover, then pay back the loans by selling off divisions and liquidating the forest, yielding a tidy profit in the process. Assisted by financing from Michael Milken, Hurwitz and Maxxam set out to do just that.
They met remarkably little resistance at first. But then, enraged by the highly accelerated logging of old-growth, the environmental movement began confronting Pacific Lumber. Earth First! activists staged large-scale protests, sit-ins on trees, and other acts. The battle reached its peak with a car-bombing attack on two leading Earth First! activists, a crime never solved.
“The Last Stand” hardly takes a neutral stand on all of this. David Harris, overwrought and breathless, builds the story in David-and-Goliath terms; in his world, the bad guys are irredeemably evil, and the good guys can do no wrong.
Well, maybe. There certainly isn’t much to be said in defense of unsustainable cutting of virgin old-growth, particularly when dictated by corporate conglomerates trying to fund their own hostile takeovers. But Harris – like Sen. Slade Gorton on the opposite side of the fence – doesn’t even try to imagine a middle ground. Worse, his approach leaves one longing for the sound of Goliath hitting the ground, but that fall, at least in this case, never comes. As Harris well knows, the war is still being played out.
Nonetheless, “The Last Stand” is an arresting portrait of the redwood battle at its high-water mark. For entirely different reasons, the book is likely to cause both sides of the timber dispute to grind their teeth. That alone is a considerable accomplishment.
Category: Reviews
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A Closer Look At The War For California’s Redwoods
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New Biography Chronicles Bcci Lawyer’s Mighty Fall
‘Friends in High Places: The Rise and Fall of Clark Clifford’
by Douglas Frantz and David McKean Little, Brown, $24.95
Few people can come close to matching the towering resume of Clark Clifford, who since the 1940s has served as a close political adviser to Democratic presidents, from Harry Truman through Jimmy Carter.
Throughout decades of power and influence, Clifford actually served in the government for only a few years: first as counsel to President Truman and later as secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson. Mostly, Clifford worked as a private lawyer, where his reputation as the consummate insider attracted many of the largest corporations and most powerful individuals in America – Howard Hughes, the DuPont family, AT&T and Phillips Petroleum all retained Clifford to solve their Washington problems.
In large part, Clark Clifford defined the modern lawyer-lobbyist, practicing in a twilight between public service and private obligation, between politics and law. A striking example was his connection with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas – Clifford loaned him money, paid his mortgage, even his daily bills while the justice vacationed at Goose Prairie, near Mount Rainier.
However, neither man revealed this when Clifford appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of his well-heeled clients. Republicans trying to remove Douglas from the court failed to uncover the Clifford connection, a relationship that would have doomed the justice’s career.
Douglas Frantz and David McKean’s “Friends in High Places: The Rise and Fall of Clark Clifford,” attempts to capture this phenomenal career; it succeeds as a summary of Clifford’s life, a biography lite. Its greatest value is its last 100 pages, which detail Clifford’s involvement with the infamous Bank of Commerce and Credit International, which ultimately led to his indictment and fall from grace.
Here, the authors offer expertise and depth: Frantz is an investigative reporter for The New York Times; McKean was an investigator in the BCCI scandal. Together they coherently describe Clifford’s amiable stumble into a hornet’s nest of international intrigue. He eventually escaped criminal charges, but significantly damaged his reputation. As he himself put it, the scandal left him with the “choice of either seeming stupid or venal.”
Clifford’s own autobiography, “Counsel to the President,” remains a better guide to the man’s remarkable life – but he relegates the BCCI affair to a single footnote.
Want the complete story? Read the autobiography, then the last 100 pages of “Friends in High Places.” Or wait until someone puts this fascinating individual in perspective in a single, complete biography. -
Gallons Of Proof — Legal Saga Shows How The System Really Works
‘A Civil Action’
by Jonathan Harr
Random House, $25
For a parent, there is nothing more terrible to consider, much less experience, than the death of a child. In Woburn, Mass., Anne Anderson watched her young son Jimmy die a slow, painful death from leukemia – and Jimmy, she soon learned, was not alone. A number of other children, all from the same small, blue-collar neighborhood, had suffered the same fate.
Anne Anderson’s neighborhood lay in the shadow of industrial facilities owned by two of the largest corporations in America, and the water in that part of Woburn had long been a subject of dispute. Residents complained of its taste and smell, but city officials repeatedly assured them that everything was fine. The water, they said, contained nothing unusual and was perfectly safe for everyone, even children, to drink.
Not satisfied with the city’s response, Anderson and her neighbors sought a remedy in the courts. Jan Schlichtmann, a flamboyant young trial lawyer with expensive tastes and a flair for winning jury trials, was hired by the families of the young victims. His small office proceeded to take on two of the nation’s major corporations – the W.R. Grace Co. and Beatrice Foods – who were represented by two of the largest, most respected law firms in Boston.
Schlichtmann, who favored using expensive hotel suites, with lavish meals and expensive wines, to influence settlement discussions, wagered virtually everything he had on the case: his office, his home, his savings, even his expensive sports car. By the middle of the trial, he was up to his neck in debt and his car had been repossessed; by the last days of the trial, his associates were fending off angry creditors and juggling the firm’s last remaining dollars to ensure that Schlichtmann could pay his dry-cleaning bills for the rest of the trial, if nothing else.
Schlichtmann’s experts discovered that toxic chemicals from the two plants had seeped underground and poisoned the neighborhood’s water supply and, with it, the children who lived there. But many things are believed to contribute to leukemia – even peanut butter has been suspected – and very little is known for certain of the causes.
Difficult case to prove
Most of the dumping had occurred long ago, and only the tattered remnants of history remained: witnesses with fading memories, empty rusted barrels, and earth contaminated by layers of pollution from different sources at different times. Sorting out the causal link between one source of pollution and a disease as poorly understood as leukemia can be difficult business at best; proving it under the harsh conditions of a courtroom can be impossible.
Despite these handicaps, “A Civil Action” tells a gripping story of epic environmental litigation – a story so compelling that Robert Redford is directing a movie version. Author Jonathan Harr immerses us in this legal drama, taking us backstage to watch lawyers fashioning legal proof from raw human experience. Harr, who has written for The New Yorker and other journals, pored over eight years of litigation records and reviewed 50,000 pages of depositions and trial transcripts.
What emerges is a picture of the civil justice system far different from that usually portrayed in the popular media. Here, lawyers make mistakes, face financial realities, and do their best in difficult situations. Unlike their 30-minute, prime-time colleagues, they toil for years before an ending that is never as clean-cut as one might hope.
Harr tells this story with consummate skill, jumping back and forth between the families, their lawyer and the defense, to build real-life suspense. As Schlichtmann aptly describes a trial, it is “like being submerged in deep water for weeks at a time. The world above becomes a faint echo. War, scandal, and natural disaster may occur, but none of it seems to matter.”
Yet Harr plainly has his sights set higher than merely retelling the story of the trial, compelling as it is. The Woburn case vividly illustrates how our system of justice allows a small handful of working-class families to hire a lawyer, step into court and challenge powerful corporate interests.
But that’s only the most obvious, and least interesting, lesson. Harr’s triumph is in his brutally accurate depiction of civil litigation when played for keeps with high stakes. Despite strong evidence of pollution by the defendants, it took eight years and millions of dollars to complete the case.
Costly to everyone
By the end, lawyers on both sides had been found to have violated ethical obligations, and one lawyer was driven to bankruptcy. The sheer cost of the trial – expert analysis and testimony, graphic exhibits and thousands of hours of preparation – ultimately absorbed a huge percentage of the award for damages. The remainder was reduced further to compensate the families’ lawyer’s contingent fee.
The families who suffered the tragedy – remember them? – ultimately recovered a relatively small amount after years of struggle. Their lawyer was left in bankruptcy, and their corporate opponents were left to ponder liability on obscure grounds.
“A Civil Action” has an uncomfortably untidy ending – but perhaps more true and accurate than we might like to admit. -
‘The Death Of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America”
‘The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America’
by Philip K. Howard
Random House, $18
Americans love to rail against excessive regulation – at least until someone gets hurt. Then they cry, “There ought to be a law!”
Philip K. Howard’s new book, “The Death of Common Sense,” is the latest swing of this pendulum. The slim volume is packed with splendid examples of absurd regulatory inflexibility – like the portable public toilets in New York, doomed because they were not wheelchair-accessible; or the nuns who were stopped from converting townhouses into homeless shelters because they could not afford to install elevators.
Howard complains that this growth of bureaucratic rule-making stifles economic growth and impedes the very safety and environmental objectives that the regulations are supposed to ensure. “Common sense,” he declares, is the solution.
But countless lives have been saved by seat belts, air bags, air-quality standards, child-resistant drug bottles and flame-retardant requirements for children’s pajamas. Howard threatens to throw the baby out with the bath water. And “common sense” is not always obvious, especially to unelected government regulators.
Still, as our own governor was distressed to discover last month when he tried to allow a girl to keep a horse she had found, formidable regulatory barriers often thwart common-sensical solutions. Flexibility and measured deregulation can be valuable goals. Howard’s overwrought manifesto at least provides a starting place for the debate. -
A Valuable Profile Of Hugo Black
‘Hugo Black: A Biography’
by Roger K. Newman
Pantheon/Cornelia & Michael Bessie, $35
Talk about a confirmation problem. While Clarence Thomas had to worry about sexual harassment and Robert Bork had to explain his radical conservatism, Hugo Black, nominated to the Supreme Court by President Franklin Roosevelt, was burdened with the mother of all confirmation worries: membership in the Ku Klux Klan.
But it was 1937, and confirmation hearings weren’t what they are today. Ironically, if current standards had been applied, America would have lost one of its greatest justices, and the Warren Court might never have achieved its legacy of individual rights and liberty – due in part to the contributions of Justice Hugo Black.
With a life this colorful and significant, it is astonishing that no serious biography of the one-time Alabama senator has been written before now. Legal scholar Roger K. Newman finally fills that gap, providing a long-overdue profile of this enigmatic justice.
EARLY TRIAL WATCHER
Hugo LaFayette Black was born in rural Alabama in 1886. His father ran a general store near the county courthouse, where young Hugo sat mesmerized through virtually every trial. This early exposure served him well, first as a law student at the University of Alabama, then as a county prosecutor, judge and trial lawyer.
Then, in 1923 – three years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate – Black joined the Ku Klux Klan. The organization was at its peak; the initiation ceremony for him and others was attended by 25,000 people. Black later claimed he only “went to a couple of meetings and spoke about liberty.” Newman, however, documents extensive involvement with the Klan and its reciprocal support for his Senate campaign.
Once elected, Black enthusiastically embraced the New Deal, and the Supreme Court nomination was his reward. Despite persistent KKK rumors, the Senate confirmed him, with one senator dryly remarking, “Hugo won’t have to buy a new robe; he can have his white one dyed black.”
Later, when an enterprising journalist uncovered Black’s Klan involvement, the nation erupted, and Black was able to put the issue to rest only after a dramatic nationwide radio broadcast.
STAUNCHLY DEFENDED CIVIL RIGHTS
Ironically, on the High Court and in the Senate, Black rejected Klan principles that had helped him gain power. He became the court’s most ardent defender of individual liberty. Indeed, decades later his son introduced him at a bar-association gathering by saying, “Hugo Black used to wear white robes and frighten black people. Now he wears black robes and frightens white people.”
Black believed that most constitutional provisions were absolute. The First Amendment, he liked to emphasize, says “Congress shall make no law,” not “some laws” abridging freedom of speech. “Being a rather backward country fellow,” he explained, “I understand it to mean what the words say.”
By his death in 1971, Black had seen many of his ringing dissents from earlier, conservative rulings become law during the more liberal Warren Court of the 1960s. Just weeks before he died, his concurring opinion in the Pentagon Papers case – he rejected the Nixon administration’s attempt to halt their publication – capped a career devoted to protecting First Amendment freedoms.
This is a compelling survey of a kaleidoscopic career, but it’s only half complete. While Newman comprehensively portrays Black’s life work, he almost completely avoids any discussion of his personal life, his troubled wife, or his daughters. His family moves through the book like shadows, ill-defined and unexplained.
Newman’s efforts are nonetheless a good first step toward understanding Hugo Black. It’s just a shame it isn’t more. -
Legal Thrills — `Undue Influence’ A Real Blood-Tingler
‘Undue Influence’
by Steve Martini
Putnam, $22.95
Laurel Vega has a problem. In the midst of a hostile custody battle with her sleazy ex-husband, his new wife is found naked and dead – shot through the head – in the family bathtub. The evidence ominously points to Laurel.
Her only hope for keeping her children, and maybe her life, is Paul Madriani, who was married to her late sister.
So begins “Undue Influence,” an outstanding new courtroom thriller by Bellingham author Steve Martini, among the best of the recent flood of lawyers-turned-authors. Since debuting two years ago with “Compelling Evidence,” followed last year by “Prime Suspect” – both national bestsellers – Martini has more than 4 million copies of his books in print.
“Undue Influence,” however, outshines those earlier works; indeed, it rivals Scott Turow’s masterpiece of the courtroom-thriller genre, “Presumed Innocent.”
Courtroom veteran tells story
Once again, the story is told by Madriani, a battle-scarred courtroom veteran who is raising his young daughter Sarah since his wife Nikki’s death from cancer. He also made Nikki a deathbed promise to protect her younger sister, Laurel – a promise put to the test when Laurel is charged with the grisly bathtub murder.
There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of Laurel’s guilt: She had left town after the murder and was apprehended several states away, washing a rug the ex-husband claims came from the bathroom where the murder occurred; a witness has placed her at the scene near the time of the murder; and the prosecutor produces video footage of a heated argument between Laurel and the victim.
In addition, an item from the dead woman’s purse was found in Laurel’s purse at the time of her arrest, and – to make matters worse – homicide detective Jimmy Lama, who is in charge of the investigation, has a blinding grudge against Madriani. Lama is only too delighted to have Madriani’s sister-in-law as a prime suspect for murder.
Of course, things are not always as they seem – a fact that the novel tantalizingly underscores as it thunders toward a devilish conclusion.
Author’s own experience shows
Martini’s own courtroom experience shows as he expertly propels readers through radical shifts in the interpretation of the physical evidence in Laurel’s trial – leading first to the conclusion that she did it, then casting doubt, then reversing things once again. In the last few pages, Martini deftly resolves the case with an unexpected but cleverly foreshadowed twist – a surprise resolution that seems a required element in today’s legal thrillers, but one that few writers can pull off as convincingly.
Martini emerges as a peer of Turow for, like the Chicago attorney’s fiction, “Undue Influence” has a plot that flows effortlessly and credibly, generating considerable suspense from a series of stunning courtroom reversals and surprises during a dramatic trial. Martini also easily surpasses the current king of the legal thriller, John Grisham, whose bestsellers such as “The Firm,” “The Client” and “The Pelican Brief” tend to rely on transparent plot contrivances to fabricate suspense and stitch together loose ends.
“Undue Influence” is not without weakness, however. It remains overburdened with sexual innuendo and unrealistic male-female dialogue, both common curses of the genre. One would think that, by now, the tough-talking, super-macho cop/detective/lawyer would be retired in favor of the subtler – and richer – characters who animate Turow’s more literary thrillers.
Nor does Martini attempt to address any larger moral issues: His purpose clearly is to entertain, not philosophize. But this is a criticism applicable to most thrillers – and “Undue Influence” stands head and shoulders above the pack. Indeed, readers should exercise caution; this book will lay waste to your sleeping schedule. -
Paging Bill — A Look Inside Clinton’s White House . . .
‘The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House’
By Bob Woodward
Simon and Schuster; $24
To hear Bob Woodward tell it, President Clinton’s first months in the White House were chaotic, disorganized and filled with tension between his economic advisers pushing deficit reduction and his former campaign staff pushing candidate Clinton’s social agenda on welfare reform, health care and public investments. Woodward, the assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, is the author of “The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House,” his “inside” review of the first 18 months of the Clinton presidency.
Woodward reports that the president often exploded in anger at his staff for confused or poor-quality work and that Hillary Rodham Clinton bitterly criticized the White House staff for forcing Clinton to become “Mechanic in Chief.” According to Woodward, the first lady railed at the staff that she spent more time picking a family movie than they spent considering strategy.
The book is based on a series of “deep background” interviews with virtually all of the significant officials at the White House, including Clinton himself. Woodward’s introduction defensively notes that it is not intended to serve as a definitive history. That’s good. It’s not. Woodward instead aims to fill that gap between daily news reporting and, later, more scholarly efforts at history. But Woodward falls short of even that limited goal.
The book is filled with direct quotations or descriptions of what one or another of the players saw or thought during the events under discussion – remarkably similar in style to the pseudo-fictional biography of Sen. Ted Kennedy, “The Last Brother,” released (and widely panned) last year by Joe McGinniss. The difference, Woodward insists, is that his material comes directly from interviews with the participants – pure hearsay rather than pure fiction. He attempts a preemptive strike against criticism by pompously declaring that his notes and tapes will be deposited with Yale University, to be opened in 40 years.
The book focuses almost exclusively on the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing to pass the administration’s budget. From presidential promises and cajoling, to outright shouting matches between the president and reluctant Democrats, Woodward purports to deliver the inside story.
But this “review” of the first 18 months is absurdly incomplete. Woodward barely even mentions some of the most critical events – both positive and negative – of the first 18 months. NAFTA, the Family Leave Act, Whitewater, the Lani Guanier fiasco, the withdrawn nomination of Zoe Baird as attorney general, gays in the military, the appointment of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and virtually every aspect of foreign policy all get short shrift.
Even on the budget process itself, the book is remarkably uneven and choppy. Presidential adviser George Stephanopolous, for example, was plainly a favorite source. Many key events are recounted from his view, to the exclusion of others’. Woodward’s newspaper-style chapters lurch from one participant to the next, describing what are often mundane or unremarkable meetings. The book, indeed, often has the feel of a rough cut-and-paste from a few dozen separate interviews.
The book, to paraphrase Sidney Blumenthal, is all overture and no opera. Is it really remarkable that the first Democratic administration in 12 years was disorganized when it took over? Or that a president can be angered by sloppy staff work? Woodward, for all his tsk-tsking, fails even to give credit where credit is due: Clinton did forge a majority and pass a budget for the first time in years. And NAFTA. And the Family Leave Act. Maybe the legislative process was messy – all arm-twisting, anguished compromise, and shouting. But that’s not news; that how legislation gets passed. -
King Of The Courts — A Heartfelt Tribute To `The 10Th Justice’
‘Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge’
by Gerald Gunther Knopf, $35
As President Clinton ponders a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, one can only hope he finds someone of the caliber of Judge Learned Hand, no matter which clamoring constituency he tries to satisfy.
When asked to name the greatest living American jurist among his colleagues on the high court, no less an authority than Justice Benjamin Cardozo said, “The greatest living American jurist isn’t on the Supreme Court.” He was referring to Learned Hand, who served more than 50 years on the federal bench in New York, indelibly altered American law, and was widely acclaimed a “judicial giant.”
A perfect candidate for the Supreme Court – Hand was frequently called “the 10th justice” – he never made it. He was passed over twice, once by Hoover and once by Franklin Roosevelt, but he nevertheless became one of the most profoundly influential jurists in American history.
Arresting portrait
Stanford law professor Gerald Gunther, a leading constitutional scholar and one of Hand’s former law clerks, devoted two decades to writing this new and arresting portrait of Hand’s life and work. The effort shows. “Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge” is a dazzling monument to the man himself and a staggering review of half a century of fundamental change in American law and politics.
Also, Gunther’s lively narrative successfully skirts the twin
dangers of excessive legalism and uncritical idolatry: This is an unflinching examination of an agonized, thoughtful, and extraordinary life.
Hand, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Taft in 1909 and elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 15 years later by President Coolidge, served throughout the “golden age” of American jurisprudence. A close associate of Supreme Court Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter, Hand bridled at the conservative higher court’s repeated rejection of progressive social legislation by broadly interpreting the ambiguous due-process clause of the constitution.
Hand rejected the view that such “judicial activism” could safeguard freedom: “Believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”
Ironically, Hand’s philosophy of “judicial restraint” made him a prominent liberal in the pre-New Deal era, but it put him in conflict with liberals after the New Deal. Nonetheless, Hand held fast to his view through dramatic shifts in the prevailing political and legal winds until his death in 1961 at age 89.
Reveals human side
Gunther’s biography also reveals the human side of the jurist. Billings Learned Hand was born in 1872 in Albany, N.Y., into a family of lawyers and judges. Though his father died when young Learned was only 14, he followed family footsteps to both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. The emotional scars received there by his failure to gain admission to the most exclusive clubs were to haunt him the rest of his life.
In 1902, Hand married Frances Fincke, an independent-minded woman, and they had three daughters. Yet theirs became an odd marriage. Gunther delicately treats Frances’ relationship with Louis Dow, a close friend who often visited when the judge was away – he would sit in Hand’s place at the head of the table – and accompanied Frances on long European vacations. It was only after Dow’s death in 1944 that the Hands again grew as close as in their early years.
Hand’s love of poetry and song appears throughout. Gunther describes a law clerk’s disappointed retreat after failing to convince Hand on a point of law, only to be startled by the judge coming through the door, dancing a jig and singing at the top of his voice, “You’re mad at me! You’re mad at me!”
In contrast, lawyers appearing before the judge rarely fared as well. An imposing figure with large bushy eyebrows, Hand dominated the bench, once even causing a law student to faint during a practice argument.
But Hand was at his best in his extensive judicial writings, speeches, and vast private correspondence with the leading legal and political figures of his era. Gunther, too, excels at culling the best from this fascinating historical record.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony during the Roaring ’20s, Hand stirred controversy by appearing to encourage youthful rebellion: “Our dangers . . . are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who . . . shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those . . . who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.”
A skeptic, above all else
While he spoke out against McCarthyism in the 1950s, Hand was, above all else, a skeptic who was “never too sure he was right” and greatly valued the ability to understand the weakness of one’s own position. Liberty, he wrote, “is secure only (in) that sense of fair play, of give and take, of the uncertainty of human hypotheses, of how changeable and passing are our surest convictions.”
Hand always insisted that he was never disappointed by his failure to be elevated to the Supreme Court. Yet his private correspondence with his wife tells a different tale – a point that Gunther admits startled him to discover. But even from the court of appeals, Learned Hand set a standard so high that few, on or off the Supreme Court, can come close to matching his influence.
By anyone’s reckoning, Learned Hand has a place among the small handful of judges – including Holmes, Brandeis, and Cardozo – who can rightfully be ranked as the truly great American jurists of the century. Gunther’s superb and heartfelt biography is an outstanding tribute to a towering figure in American law. -
Understanding Jfk — Two Detailed Studies Of His Life, Death
With the crack of rifle fire on Nov. 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald brutally cut short President John F. Kennedy’s first term in office – the “Thousand Days” that has since grown to mythic proportions and spawned a series of either fawning or viciously distorted histories.
The Kennedy presidency is examined in minute detail and refreshing objectivity by syndicated columnist Richard Reeves in his new study, “President Kennedy: Profile of Power” (Simon & Schuster, $30). Reeves strives to reconstruct the day-to-day view from inside the Kennedy Oval Office at the height of the Cold War.
Kennedy, it becomes clear, was constantly weighing his every step with an eye toward the Soviets. He was aware that many viewed him as indecisive and weak and that he had been elected by a very narrow margin of 118,574 votes – a number he kept on a piece of paper in his pocket.
Kennedy’s domestic agenda languished, despite Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats were not anxious to enact his plans for health care for the elderly, free trade for Europe and aid to education. Sounds eerily familiar.
In addition, Kennedy’s leadership style emerges as chaotic and disorganized. Envisioned at first as a break with the Eisenhower bureaucracy, Kennedy was quickly buried in paper and minutiae, and like many new presidents, he was unprepared for the job’s demands.
The trouble in Cuba
One surprise was the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. A tiny Cuban brigade, trained and financed by the American military, was pinned down on the beach, its survival or escape in question without full-scale American intervention.
Only later did Kennedy realize that his generals had envisioned precisely that all along. He vowed not to repeat the experience, subsequently withdrawing our military from further engagement in Laos. Reeves believes the two humiliations set the stage for the increasing American commitment to Vietnam and for Kennedy’s bold confrontation with the Soviets over the Cuban missiles: “There are limits to the number of defeats I can defend in one 12-month period,” Kennedy told confidants.
Reeves devotes an extended portion of the book to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the account recalls how close the nation came to a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. Kennedy’s strategy ultimately defused the crisis, but only on the Sunday morning before a planned military invasion on Tuesday. Like many Americans, JFK drew his family close during the confrontation, recognizing the potential disaster lurking.
Smaller confrontations
Reeves also portrays a seriously ill man, heavily medicated by a number of sometimes feuding doctors, and almost incapacitated at times by his back pains, but still struggling Richard Reeves with the decisions and emergencies demanding his attention. He also recalls less momentous situations.
In early 1962, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to know why the president was not taking action against an ambassador in Europe who was caught, literally, with his pants down, jumping from the window of a lady’s bedroom. Kennedy smoothly replied that he would make an effort to hire ambassadors who could run faster.
Kennedy’s possibly most revealing comment was made to Washington Star reporter Mary McGrory, who had written about Republican presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater. Kennedy told McGrory that he had noticed the article, but had not read it: “I don’t read things about politicians who say they would rather be right than be president.”
Ultimately, that comment defines the Kennedy presidency for Reeves: an intensely pragmatic politician willing to defer his ideals to the political reality of the moment.
Reeves’ writing is fluid and captivating, but he could have used a more careful editor. Several quotations are repeated, and Reeves’ thoughtful analysis drops off as the book progresses. Still, these flaws are minor. The book is spectacularly successful in providing a ground-level view of the White House in operation. One can see Kennedy in action, flaws and all, and better understand the awesome responsibilities of the job.
Assassination revisited
Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK” (Random House, $25) picks up where Reeves leaves off. The book is a detailed study of the assassination, including dozens of new interviews, discussions of recent computer-enhanced analyses and almost 200 pages on Oswald before the assassination.
Posner reveals that Oswald earlier unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate retired U.S. Gen. Edwin Walker, a right-wing activist relieved of his duties by President Kennedy in 1961. Posner also details Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union, the skeptical reaction to him there, and his disillusioned return.
Posner takes on all the major conspiracy theorists, with particular disdain for Oliver Stone’s recent movie, “JFK.” He advances a compelling case that Oswald acted alone and that the Warren Commission reached the correct result, albeit through flawed investigative work.
Quoting historian William Manchester, Posner acknowledges that for many the assassination is difficult to comprehend, with the murdered president on one side and “that wretched waif Oswald” on the other.
“You want to add something weightier to Oswald” to invest the murder with meaning, making JFK a martyr, Manchester has written. “A conspiracy would, of course, do the job nicely. Unfortunately, there is no evidence whatever that there was one.”
Agreeing with Manchester, Posner concludes: “To say otherwise is to absolve a man with blood on his hands, and to mock the president he killed. -
The Court Tapes — Publication Of Tapes Of Famous Arguments Before The Supreme Court Has Stirred Legal Criticism And Has The Justices In A Snit
Peter Irons has his work cut out for him.
The 53-year-old attorney and political science professor may soon be taking on the toughest possible legal opponent: the entire United States Supreme Court.
He is no stranger to controversy. A 1960s civil-rights activist who later served 2 1/2 years in federal prison for draft resistance during the Vietnam War, Irons has angered the court by making public some of its most significant debates in the past four decades – debates such as Roe v. Wade on abortion rights, Cooper v. Aaron on school desegregation in Little Rock, and United States v. Nixon on the Watergate tapes.
Irons, who is director of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, released copies of the tapes through the nonprofit publisher, The New Press, only after signing a pledge not to reproduce them. The court considers it a “clear violation” of Irons’ contract with the National Archives, said a court spokeswoman, and “is considering what legal remedies may be appropriate.”
Public records
Irons, on the other hand, considers it common-sense disclosure of public records and adamantly rejects the court’s justification for its restrictive rules.
“It seems a little odd that they have only complained when the tapes were made available more widely to the general public,” said Irons in a telephone interview. “Why is it in the public interest to require every person who wants to use one of the tapes to go through the laborious and expensive and time-consuming procedure Supreme Court public information officer of requesting each one individually from the National Archives – and then waiting months for a response?”
The tapes, Irons pointed out, have been available to legal scholars for years, and the court has “never defined what the harm would be by wider release of these tapes.” He said he is distressed by what he called the court’s attempt at “trial and conviction through press release.”
The tapes are available at bookstores in a boxed set titled “May It Please the Court. . .” – the traditional opening phrase used by attorneys before the nine justices. Priced at $75, the package edited by Irons and his associate, Stephanie Guitton, includes six 90-minute audiocassettes and a 370-page book of transcripts of oral arguments in 23 landmark decisions.
Irons admits that he asked neither the court nor the National Archives for permission to reproduce the tapes.
“I knew perfectly well that . . . it would be an exercise in futility,” he said, acknowledging that he agreed not to reproduce the tapes or allow them to be reproduced for any purpose. The contract with the archives, provided by the court to The Seattle Times, also shows that Irons agreed “to use such audio tape for private research and teaching purposes only.”
Though the agreement seems clear-cut, Irons explains his signing and subsequent disregard of it in true lawyerly fashion. His release of the tapes, he said, is “consistent with the contracts to the extent that the contracts are intelligible at all.”
The tapes, he continued, “belong to the American people. They do not belong to the Court or to the justices. . . . They’re public records.”
Recording since 1955
The Supreme Court itself began recording oral arguments for internal use in 1955, and in 1969 began turning the tapes over to the National Archives, where copies are made available “for private research and teaching purposes only.” The archives bars duplication of the copies for any other use, including radio or television broadcast – a provision already violated this week when National Public Radio aired excerpts from “May It Please the Court. . .” during a three-day series on its “Morning Edition” news program.
Calling the set of tapes a “clear violation of Professor Irons’ contractual commitments,” the spokeswoman for the Supreme Court notes that others have sought permission to reproduce the tapes and such requests have been routinely denied.
“He signed several contracts with the archives, but he must have had his fingers crossed behind his back,” said Toni House, the court’s public information officer. The tapes, she said, belong to the court and the court had neither the obligation to produce them nor to deliver them to the archives.
However, in a telephone conversation House was unable to articulate any compelling public interest in restricting distribution of the tapes. She acknowledged that copies of the tapes were available to scholars and even for classroom use. What further public interest was served in denying the taxpaying public access to the tapes?
Sound bites
“The court,” she said, “is concerned about distortion and sound bites.” House refused to say what actions the justices might take when they reconvene later this month, noting only that the court has its own lawyers and could refer the matter to the Justice Department.
Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California, does see some purpose in the court’s restrictions.
“Oral arguments are high-pressure situations, for both the judges and the lawyers,” said Kozinski in a telephone interview. “Judges may be hesitant to ask questions if they know that every stutter will be on the evening news.”
But constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School agrees with Irons that the court has “no legitimate general interest” in precluding distribution of the tapes. In fact, Tribe said by telephone, the “general public ought to have access to the tapes. It’s wrong in principle that the only people who have access to these arguments are those that can fit into the courtroom.”
However, he noted that “it doesn’t follow that the restrictions are unconstitutional or that you should take the law into your own hands . . . I think that’s a pretty extreme way of challenging a rule.”
Louis Michael Seidman, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University and a former clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, agrees with Tribe, saying that the court “looks foolish” for refusing to release the tapes and that it “makes the court look like it has something to hide.”
A glimpse inside
The tapes themselves are a fascinating glimpse into the marble and velvet-shrouded public courtroom of the highest court in the land. Among other highlights, they include:
— Gideon v. Wainwright, in which the Court established the right to counsel for the poor. Abe Fortas, later a Supreme Court justice himself, shakes with indignation at the state of Florida’s suggestion that an indigent could possibly match the state without the assistance of counsel, as he booms “(n)o man, certainly no layman, can conduct a trial in his own defense so that the trial is a fair trial.”
— Cooper v. Aaron, in which the court rejected the state of Arkansas’ attempt to block school integration. A young Thurgood Marshall makes a passionate argument, including: “I worry about the white children in Little Rock who are told, as young people, that the way to get your rights is to violate the law and defy the lawful authorities. I’m worried about their future. I don’t worry about those Negro kids’ future, They’ve been struggling with democracy long enough.”
— United States v. Nixon, or the Watergate tapes case. This tape includes then-Justice Marshall’s cutting cross-examination of James St. Clair, President Richard Nixon’s lawyer, on whether the president would obey the court’s ruling if it compelled release of the Watergate tapes.
— Gregg v. Georgia, in which the court held the modern death penalty constitutional. Robert Bork, then U.S. Solicitor General, made a ponderous argument for the government, facing off against New York University’s sparkling Anthony Amsterdam.
— Roe v. Wade, in which the court first recognized constitutional protection for abortion. Texas Assistant Attorney General Jay Floyd began his argument against young attorney Sarah Weddington with a ghastly, perhaps revealing, attempt at humor: “It’s an old joke,” Floyd says, “but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word.” No one laughed.
There are many other prominent or controversial arguments, from “one-man-one-vote” in Baker v. Carr, to the right to remain silent in Miranda v. Arizona. Irons has done a masterful job of editing the tapes, and he introduces each with a brief background on the case. From time to time, he interrupts the tapes to identify (and sometimes misidentify) the justices asking questions, and he concludes each with a brief summary of the court’s ultimate ruling.
The summaries make clear Irons’ personal approval or disapproval of the results, but he argues that “it is virtually impossible to totally eliminate your personal perspective on things. I’ve never made any pretense of being totally unbiased”
Ultimately, the tapes are a wonderful resource, even if sensationalized by the method of their release. The contrast between the more emotional and passionate arguments of the early tapes and the cooler, more formal recent arguments is striking.
Stripping away mystique
For the vast bulk of the American public, unable to attend any argument before the high court – much less 23 of its most important – the tapes are invaluable. They strip away the court’s black-robed mystique to reveal the very human, very simple, and very compelling core of nine men and women struggling to come to terms with difficult issues in a responsible way.
As Irons notes, the tapes make the court look like the serious, deliberative body it is.
“There is nothing on the tapes that diminishes the integrity of the court,” he said. “I think that people will have a better understanding of the Court as an institution and also (an opportunity) to experience these historic cases.