Category Archives: Major Print Outlets

Stuart Taylor, Jr.’s media appearances in print publications.

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Glimpses of the Least Pretentious of Men

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Justice Thurgood Marshall was sitting in his chambers, spinning yarns.

 The night before, he had been watching former President Jimmy Carter’s speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention on TV. "I said to my wife, ‘Babe, he sure looks old,’" Marshall (then 80) recalled with a puckish grin. "And she said, ‘Have you looked in the mirror lately?’

"Every once in a while," added the greatest lawyer of the 20th century, "you have to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘Who do you think you are? You aren’t so special.’"

One of the special things about Thurgood Marshall was that-long after his place in history had been secured-he was the least pretentious of men.

At one Supreme Court conference, he told colleagues a story about a little boy who had asked for his autograph and then handed him eight cards to sign. Why eight? "Because," the boy explained, "eight of yours gets me one of Willie Mays’."

Marshall also had a warm appreciation of people as people, their foibles and their virtues. He consented to talk privately with me a few times over the last few years about the Court and other justices, and on those visits I was always struck by his generous reservoir of good will for people with whom he deeply disagreed and his sheer love of fun. I have culled from my notebooks a few examples that I hope Marshall would not mind my quoting now.

The sometimes startlingly gruff exterior that he showed the public seemed to run about a millimeter deep. "What the hell do you want?" Marshall growled as I arrived for one appointment. Within moments, the growl gave way to his trademark, high-pitched "Hee-hee-hee," as he meandered from salty appraisals of public figures to tales of tangling with Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur in Korea.

Kind Words

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Lying to Congress: Time for New Law

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Some of us used to think it was pretty clear that lying to Congress is a crime. After all, even Ronald Reagan conceded the point. And the Supreme Court has so held.

But it’s apparently not clear enough, and restorative work by Congress and the incoming Clinton administration is needed. As evidenced by President George Bush’s smarmy apologia for executive-branch lying in his Christmas Eve pardons of six Iran-Contra defendants, any consensus that such conduct warrants prosecution has been shaken by the bitterly partisan inter-branch warfare of recent years.

The six-year-long conservative crusade to trivialize and misrepresent the lying-to-Congress prosecutions of the Iran-Contra defendants and to demonize Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh has obscured what is ultimately at stake here: the rights of the American people, through their elected representatives, to demand and receive an honest accounting of what their government is doing.

At first, apologists for the Iran-Contra liars concentrated on distorting the facts by suggesting, preposterously, that they had not lied to Congress at all. Now President Bush, in styling the convicted and accused liars whom he pardoned as patriotic victims of "the criminalization of policy differences," seems implicitly to espouse something like a privilege for executive-branch "combatants" in the "political arena" to deflect congressional inquiries by lying.

It has become a kind of covert conservative credo that executive-branch lying to Congress (not to mention the press) is not really a crime. Conservative commentator Terry Eastland comes close to saying so directly, in a thoughtful article contending that it is "unjust … to apply the criminal law to individuals who in the course of representing the executive branch especially over highly disputed policies are said to have lied to Congress."

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Clinton and the Quota Game: Round One

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Bill Clinton’s outburst last week at women’s groups who were "playing quota games" by carping about the number of women in his Cabinet was a welcome gesture of independence from the parochial agendas of Democratic interest groups. But it was also vaguely reminiscent of Lord Byron’s line about a conflicted maiden:

A little she strove, and much repented.

And whispering "I will ne’er consent"-consented.

Even as he denounced "quota games, Clinton was accommodating the quota psychology by giving assurances that his ”look like America" Cabinet would have at least four women (it does), and by suggesting that one or more prime candidates had been nudged aside on grounds of white maleness. Indeed, the Clinton transition team had signaled for weeks that no males-at least, no white males-would even be considered for attorney general.

The scuffling over the Clinton Cabinet’s chromosome count is a harbinger of a far more consequential, if less visible, struggle that will rage inside the Clinton coalition in 1993 and beyond, over how hard civil-rights enforcers should push the nation’s employers to pursue diversity through use of preferences for women and, especially, minorities.

Striking the right balance in this area will be exceedingly difficult even for one so adroit as Clinton at tempering his commendable pursuit of diversity with a well-timed shot at quota-minded "bean counters." The greatest danger to Clinton, and to this multiracial nation’s future, is that his administration will quietly succumb to unrelenting pressure from civil-rights and women’s groups to adopt their legal agenda wholesale. This would not merely give employers a healthy incentive to seek diversity; it would institutionalize something very like quotas throughout the American work force.

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Taking Justice Beyond Mud-Slinging

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

The gridlock symbolized by ever-mounting budget deficits is not the only noxious legacy of decades of divided government that the Clinton administration will inherit.

There is also the scandal syndrome: the corrosive atmosphere of mutual mistrust that poisons public discourse whenever any suspicion of official misconduct arises. As illustrated by the latest round of mud-slinging in the "Iraqgate" affair, the executive branch, Congress, and the press are all too quick to presume bad faith by one another in dealing with such matters. The result is to compound public cynicism about all of these vital institutions.

Maybe Bill Clinton can do something to break this destructive syndrome. He should at least try. It would be nice to avoid repetition of the spectacle that unfolded last week.

In his Dec. 9 press conference exonerating the Justice Department of cover-up charges, former federal judge and prosecutor Frederick Lacey-a Republican handpicked by Attorney General William Barr to pre-empt demands for a court-appointed independent counsel to probe Iraqgate-came across as intemperate, injudicious, closed-minded, and arrogant to the point of egomania.

Lacey’s two-hour tirade was characterized by blunderbuss attacks on the press and Democrats in Congress for "arrant nonsense"; unresponsive, rambling, and combative answers to entirely reasonable questions; revealing admissions of gaps in his hasty inquiry; uncritical acceptance of officials’ protestations of pure motives; and insistent self-promotion as the world’s toughest investigator.

Congressional Democrats compounded the spectacle that same afternoon by faxing out press releases trashing Lacey’s 190-page public report as a whitewash before they could possibly have read it.

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Lawrence Walsh’s Self-Inflicted Wound

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Republican partisans have been spewing vitriol for so long at Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, that it’s tempting to brush off the current claims that Walsh played a dirty election-eve trick on President George Bush as more right-wing ranting.

But this time Walsh’s critics have a point, though a more modest one than they claim: It was only natural (if ultimately mistaken) for them to suspect a political motivation when Walsh chose the last Friday before the election, Oct. 30, to drop into the public record a nugget of evidence dramatically contradicting President Bush’s claim that he was "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra.

Walsh’s critics also have a point when they complain that the mainstream media have shown a remarkable lack of interest in exploring Walsh’s October surprise, compared with, for example, the saturation coverage of the State Department search of Bill Clinton’s passport files.

It’s not that there was anything wrong per se with Walsh disclosing the evidence that so discomfited Bush-a Jan. 7, 1986, note summarizing an Oval Office meeting that day, in which then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote that the "VP favored" an "Iranian offer to release our 5 hostages in return for sale of 4000 TOWs to Iran by Israel." Indeed, one of the reasons Congress passed the independent-counsel law was to expose executive-branch lies and quasi-lies, like Bush’s efforts to distance himself from the arms-for-hostages dealings.

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Mandatory Sentence, Minimum Sense

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Dear President-elect Clinton: Your wife Hillary has spoken eloquently about how painful it was for you to put your own brother behind bars, when you gave the authorities the green light to bust Roger Clinton Jr. for selling cocaine in 1984. And your brother, now drug-free and doing well, has said that you, and 15 months in federal prison, saved his life by breaking his cocaine habit.

Think about this: Your brother might well have served a mandatory prison term of at least five years, without parole, if the current federal drug sentencing laws had been in effect when he was arrested. And with a little bad luck-if, for example, his drug of choice had been crack cocaine-he could still be behind bars, serving a 10-year mandatory term.

What chance would a sentence like that have left Roger of salvaging a decent life? What purpose would it have served in the war against crime? Would it have been just?

This example should burn in your conscience until you do something about the most outrageous single source of injustice, waste, cruelty, and stupidity in the federal criminal-justice system today: the sentencing of non-violent, small-time drug offenders like Roger, by the thousands, to prison terms of five, 10, and even 20 years without parole, under the system of mandatory minimum sentencing laws that the Reagan and Bush administrations have whooped through Congress since 1986.

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When Quick Justice Is No Justice at All

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Is there a constitutional right not to be executed for a crime of which you’ve been convicted but can now prove your innocence?

The question answers itself: Of course there is. But Assistant Attorney General Margaret Griffey of Texas gamely maintained the contrary in an Oct. 7 argument before the Supreme Court in Herrera v. Collins.

"Suppose you have a videotape which conclusively shows the person is innocent, and you have a state which, as a matter of policy or law or both, simply does not hear new evidence claims," Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. "Is there a federal constitutional violation?"

"No, Your Honor, there is not," Griffey responded, asserting that such an execution "would not be violative of the Constitution."

Wow. It is a measure of the death penalty’s current vogue that such a position could be maintained before the nation’s most august tribunal without provoking gasps of disbelief.

But the issue in Herrera is not quite as simple, and the state’s position not quite as absurd, as this exchange might make it seem. Rather, as Solicitor General Kenneth Starr contends in the Bush administration’s amicus brief, the central question is whether the settled constitutional rule against executing an innocent defendant "requires a state to establish a judicial, post-conviction mechanism for entertaining a prisoner’s challenge to his conviction on the basis of newly discovered evidence."

Starr’s answer is no: The states are not required by the Constitution-and federal judges are not permitted by the habeas corpus statute-to afford any prisoner even the most cursory hearing into newly discovered evidence, no matter how much doubt it may cast on his guilt.

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Mediagate: Anatomy of a Feeding Frenzy

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The American Lawyer

Remember Iraqgate? It may seem ancient and obscure. But just two years ago, it was big. Very big.

This was the "scandal" that hounded George Bush as he slumped toward the 1992 election. Thousands of newspaper articles and a gaggle or television specials turned his greatest triumph-his victory over Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf war-into a political liability, by spreading unfounded claims that Bush had secretly and illegally plotted to arm Iraq and then had orchestrated a cover-up.

Iraqgate grew out of legitimate criticism of the Reagan-Bush policy of seeking normal economic relations with-and, some say, appeasing-the brutal, Kurd-gassing, arms-buying Iraqi regime in the years leading up to its August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. Bush may well have paid too little heed to warnings that Iraq was intent on using Western technology to build nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

But what made Iraqgate front-page news everywhere was a crescendo of allegations and innuendos of criminality, which New York Times columnist William Safire sum marized as "the Bush administration’s fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress, and its obstruction of justice." Such charges multiplied throughout 1992, due to assiduous promotion by an array of prominent journalists, congressional Democrats, and a federal judge.

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From Statesman to Front Man

by Gay Jervey & Stuart Taylor, Jr

The American Lawyer

Prologue – The Tragedy Of An Aging Appollo

Clark McAdams Clifford sat before the congressional rabble he had wowed in years past, explaining why the multimillion-dollar stock deal that had been arranged and financed for him by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International had been a fitting reward for his stellar service as chairman of First American Bankshares in Washington, D.C.

First American, Clifford noted, had prospered since 1982 under leadership that he and Robert Altman, his protege and law partner, had provided: Assets had quintupled, profits quadrupled. In the first few years Clifford had taken only token compensationña paltry $50,000 a year. By 1986, Clifford explained, First American’s stockholders "wanted a closer bond with Mr. Altaian and me," cemented by a stake in the company’s continued prosperity.

But this time the House Banking Committee wasn’t buying it. The members greeted Clifford’s testimony on that September day in 1991 with hostile skepticism. This legendary wise man, whose extraordinary persuasive talents had carried him to the apex of prominence and wealth, could hardly persuade anyone that his stock deal didn’t stink.

"I think it’s the stock deal that cost Clark the esteem of people who admired him in Washington," says a longtime friendly acquaintance of Clifford’s. "It was such a phony deal."

Was it? Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. And Clifford projects such unwavering belief in his own innocence that even one of his prosecutors doubts that he consciously did anything corrupt in dealing with BCCI. "I believe that Clark Clifford doesn’t think he was guilty of anything," this prosecutor says. "He thinks it’s what he did all his life. It’s good advocacy."

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Iraqgate: A Goof or a Felony?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Before Attorney General William Barr-spoiled the symmetry on Friday, we had a near-perfect Washington triangle: FBI Director William Sessions was investigating the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. The CIA was investigating itself. And the Justice Department was investigating Sessions, his assistant, and his wife.

And now comes Frederick Lacey, a retired federal district judge from New Jersey whom Barr-named as "independent counsel"-but not the normal, court-appointed kind-to investigate Justice’s "Iraqgate" investigation.

It was a wise move by Barr, although it’s unclear whether Lacey’s probe will carry the same credibility as would one by a court-appointed independent counsel. (Lacey’s assignment includes advising Barr on whether to seek a court-appointed independent counsel later.) Barr-said that his subordinates "deserve to be exonerated," but that "in the current political climate, I have regrettably concluded that if I determine that they have done nothing wrong, they will not receive that exoneration.”

That’s one of the reasons why Iraqgate is a textbook illustration of the need for some kind of mechanism-not necessarily the one we have now, which will expire on Dec. 15-for referring such politically charged matters to prosecutors genuinely independent of the incumbent administration. Barr’s solution of making the appointment himself may get him past this crisis, but for the long term it’s not good enough.

What gave this scandal legs was the flap over the submission by Justice and the CIA of a misleading-or, at best, incomplete-Sept. 17 CIA letter to U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob, who was presiding over a case involving billions of dollars in allegedly illegal loans to Iraq that were funneled through the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Atlanta.