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.

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