Assignment America; 120; Edward Bennett Williams: Superlawyer

The. The many awards in this Washington conference room belong to Edward Bennett Williams. Williams is probably the most famous trial lawyer in the country calling Williams a lawyer is like calling Heifetz a fiddler. It is true but it is a gray description of a technicolor man. Courtroom drama as dramatic indeed and today Williams is the largest star of that stage. He is a man of remarkable energies and strong passions. His clients have included Senator Joe McCarthy, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, mobster Frank Costello, Jimmy Hoffa, Bobby Baker and most recently John Conley. Today I'm going to talk with Williams about his career and his profession about the man and principles he has

defended. [Drums] We've just gone through two years during which the American public saw nightly on the evening news and daily sometimes on television broadcasts. The spectacle of lawyers prosecuting lawyers. I'm referring of course to the Watergate. Why were so many lawyers crooks to ask it straight out. I think it's a tragedy. And the worst question uh for a lawyer to answer a worst question for a lawyer to answer is why don't we do something about those crocks that we catch. And it seems to me that uh

one of the shames of our profession is that every time one of our brethren at the bar gets caught in trouble instead of cleaning out the stable before it becomes an ?orgyan? stable we all rally to his defense which I helped.[Man ]What should be done. Well I think that we've got to once again impose an interior discipline system that works and get rid of the charlatans and the scoundrels who are exposed. And I don't think we've done a very good job about doing that I don't think we've done a good job in a lot of the big cities in the United States and doing it. I am not proud of it and I do not defend it. And I think your observation is dead right. And it's about time that the profession uh exacted higher standards of its members than those that are spelled out in the criminal code of the United States. [George Will]: In the wake of the Watergate there's been some questions raised about whether or not the prosecution of the Watergate cover up and indeed the unraveling of it

didn't represent some perversion of due process of the legal system. Some people dissent from this and they cite several matters and I'd like your opinion on them. They say Well first of all the cover up really began to unravel when Judge Sareka imposed some terribly severe sentences which looked, certainly to the defendants, as an attempt to coerce confessions out of them. What do you think of that in particular and Judge Sareka his handling of the trial in general. Well there's trials all the way through really. I think that it was inevitable that uh Watergate would have been have unraveled. There were too many people uh involved for that secret to have been kept uh in this city. You know. a secret is a three hour head star that's all it is. And uh for the 16 or 18 or 20 people to who have

been involved in a massive historical conspiracy to obstruct the processes of justice it would absolutely certainly have uh evolved at some point. Now Judge Sirica by imposing hard sentences I think brought about the disclosure more rapidly than it otherwise would have come. I believe one of the defendants Barker or Hunter perhaps both got up to 35 years for an unsuccessful burglary and that was obviously a sentence designed to coerce a confession from them. And as such it's a form I would think of judicial torture. Does that alarm you? It didn't alarm me at the time now because I felt uh that I was quite frustrated about the fact that uh the facts were not emerging on this. I had tried myself to get at the facts in a civil suit and took a battery of uh depositions in this very office and uh was hitting uh a brick wall because the stonewalling was really

effective in those days. But now you say it at the time it didn't bother you and now after mature reflection does that sort of ends justify the means. I am against uh the philosophical concept of ends justifying means. I really am deeply and if the means had been illicit, If the means had been immoral I would certainly be opposed. But I don't find the kind of immorality that you seem to find in the senses that you imposed in that case. How about the other sentencing or non sentencing. Some Americans feel that equal justice under law was defeated when the president President Ford pardoned President Nixon. It's a very troublesome subject um and I'll tell you precisely how I feel about it. I changed my mind 180 degrees on that subject. At the time I was terribly worried. Equal justice under law means something very

very important to me. When I came to this city as a poor kid and went to law school the most thrilling words to me in this city were those words on the Supreme Court because it meant I was equal. It meant that as a poor kid 20 years old I was equal to anyone else in the eyes of the law. All those words mean a lot more to me than they meant then because I now understand that it means more than equal justice, it means equal educational opportunity, It means equal enfranchisement, it means equal respect. It means equal affection. These are the patrimony of every American now. When President Nixon was pardoned by President Ford I think I was part of the crowd uh who felt that it was an imprudent and an improper assault on those words. I don't feel that way anymore. I really don't. I went through a long

case. I came out of it and I think I want America to address itself to other problems that are more important than trying to put a former president in the penitentiary. I think President Ford was probably right in bringing the curtain down. Watergate is now over there's no longer a reason for the Watergate prosecutors office to stay in business. I deplore the existence of entities that are not accountable to anyone. Watergate prosecutor's office is not accountable to anyone. Let me ask you about the special prosecutor. That's another interesting and I feel the same way about that institution as I feel about uh unaccountability of CIA in certain instances or the unaccountability of the special forces out in Southeast Asia when they were running their own war and carrying on their own foreign policy or the unaccountability of the FBI under Mr. Hoover because it became bigge,r bigger than life it was not accountable to anyone. These are the

things that frighten me. Now, if we were still in Watergate, if we were still going forward prosecuting United States of America against Richard Nixon we wouldn't be at trial yet we'd have another long long trial. We'd have a long long appeal. We'd have, then, the day of reckoning when a judge would have to decide whether Richard Nixon went to the penitentiary or not and when he made the decision we'd have the same debate two years from now that we're having now. Is that equal justice under law not to put him in prison or does equal justice under law require that a former president the United States go to the penitentiary. So that we would still be racked in a division that I think is nonproductive in our country at a time when we have all these uh horror horrendous problems facing. When you say that if we had not had the pardon and would have had a trial then we would have faced the terrible question of whether or not President Nixon should have gone to prison. You seem to be assuming

that President Nixon would indeed have been convicted of something but perhaps he would not have been convicted if he'd had a skillful defense attorney such as Edward Bennett Williams. And indeed you said at one point a few years ago when Watergate first got going that he'd be the most interesting client in the country to have. How would you have defended him? How would you have gone about this? Specificly they do you think you would have done better than St. Clair did for example? I think Jim St.Clair is a great lawyer. I've said so publicly. And when he was assaulted for defend, I mean verbally assaulted and in the press for defending the President Nixon. I uh came to this office one morning and spent an hour writing a piece for Op-Ed in The New York Times defending its right because I thought it was important to the profession that uh he not be attacked for this. I suppose I would have done it differently uh because we all do things differently.

I think that uh what would I have done. Uh Let me I really believe that I would have counseled the president if I had been his lawyer And this is a massive second guess but I said so at the time. Uh perhaps uh not to create this free floating entity, the special prosecutor. Uh, secondly never to surrender the tapes. If you had been his lawyer on them, I think if he had not surrendered the tapes that uh perhaps the uh evidence would not have been there to impeach. Or certainly wouldn't have been no.If you had been his lawyer on the morning of June June 14th after the tapes became known would you have told him to destroy them. Certainly not in a clandestine way. I think,on the White House lawn, on the White House lawn and uh because I think that a powerful argument might have been made uh

that there were so many recorded conversations that struck right at the very fiber of this democracy and its relationships with foreign governments that he could have made the argument that he had made these tapes for history that he intended to write that history one day and that they were never intended for any other purpose. Had he done that it would have created a furor a terrible furor. He'd still be president, he'd still be still the President of the United States. That's true. Now you have to make your own judgment. That is ?one? whether that was a good or a evil.I have mine you have yours. But you asked me a question as a technician as a tactician how I would have done it. I have another question pertaining to Mr. St Clair's defense of Mr. Nixon. Mr. St. Clair says and I've certainly no reason to doubt him that he did not hear all the relevant tapes. For example the decisive June 23rd tape obviously came as a surprise to him as it did to everyone else. Do you think it was responsible of

Mr. St. Clair to take on Mr. Nixon as a client but not to insist on hearing from the outset all the relevant tapes all the relevant evidence. I don't I don't know what Jim St. Clair said on that subject. I'm not familiar with it but I'll tell you in general how I feel about the subject I ask of everyone who comes in here for help. Two things. I asked total candor and dictatorial control of the case. Uh you can't operate with a committee on a battlefield. You have to make decisions all by yourself and unless I get that kind of control and unless I get total candor I won't get in. Now total candor means that every time I ask a question I have to have a full and responsive answer and I have to have no material withholdings in the event that I failed to ask the question so that there has to be a total openness. And that's the way I think a lawyer should function and its the only way can function to be effective. I don't want to learn

things in the course of the case about the case that I should have heard from the accused. If Mr. Nixon had come into this office and asked you to represent him in his Watergate troubles would you have done that? I would have had a major problem because as uh counsel for the Washington Post and as Treasurer the Democratic National Committee I would have had an overriding conflict of interest. I think it would have been very unlikely that he would have come but I'll meet the thrust of your question by saying to you that I would never turn him or anyone else away because I had an ideological difference with him or because his cause might be unpopular or because I had some judgement of a political nature or personal nature on him. The answer all things being equal, uh if I were qualified to do it and if I had no impediments, yes. Do you think lawyers should be ever discriminating in the sense that they will turn some people down not just because of a conflict of interest but

because there's an unworthy cause? Let's take first a criminal case. Well you see I think that's what you have to do. You have to delineate between criminal and civil.Of course I'm discriminating uh about civil cases if I don't like the case I won't get into it, if I don't like the client I won't get into it,if I don't like the cause I won't get into it but I'm mandated by indirection under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution to get into cases uh of a criminal nature because the Sixth Amendment says every man, no matter how socially obnoxious he may be, no matter how high the evidence may be piled against him, no matter. how heavy heavily public opinion may be marshalled against him has the right to counsel. Now nobody can have a right to counsel unless it's a corresponding duty on a council to respect that right if asked. And uh so in criminal cases I don't use that kind of discrimination. The only things that prevent me from getting into criminal cases are the ?exit? of time

and um the fact that I do have to make a living and I have to pay the mortgage and feed seven children so I I do have to get compensated. Let me ask you about compensation because that is an obvious problem in delivering equal justice under law. Not surprisingly the best advocates cost the most and you don't come cheap. Now you have to be uh in it. What do let me ask you this do you have to be a man of means to get Edward Bennett Williams. No I'm very proud of our record here in this office. We have a. large number of lawyers here in our law firm and I've often said and say again now I'd match our record of pro bono work with anybody in the United States. We do a great deal of free work for indigent people. Every one of us does a certain amount of it each year and we try to escalate that year after year. We will always do that.

Your latest triumph involved a client who is not indigent, John Connally and that case you said involved a question of a current legal practice that disturbed you particularly involving the prosecution's chief witness against Mr.Conway, Mr.Jacobson. Well it did raise an issue I uh I'm always frightened when I see government turn one witness against another witness where it's a one on one situation by offering him some form of immunity or benefit which makes it so inviting to him to become a witness that he can't resist the temptation. And uh when all the processes of government are trained on one man I I'm concerned because the resources of the government when they deployed two or three or four lawyers and they have the FBI at their command and the Treasury agencies at their command and maybe a Senate committee and their own prosecutorial

staff create a problem for an individual that is really massive. If he's going to come combat them. Are you against all forms of immunity use immunity transactional immunity? No. I'm not against all forms of immunity of course. You mentioned a Senate committee as one of the arms of government that can be brought to bear against an isolated individual. Do you think the Ervin committee, the Watergate committee, was used in an improper way to expose basically which I don't. No I don't. I don't think it's a legitimate use of the legislative process to expose. I've said this many many times I've written to the subject I believe that there is a legitimate function for a Senate committee a legitimate function for a House committee that is to get information so that that information may be imparted to the Congress and the Senate so that it can legislate intelligently in an area where it needs expertise. But even even Joe McCarthy

claimed in his committees that he was doing research for legislation can always claim. Not often not often but he- he really believed and said and I had many debates with Joe McCarthy on this subject. You were his lawyer. I had many debates with him. I was his lawyer in a couple of matters [Will] Right. [Williams] And I always took the position he didn't have the right to call a witness to expose him or humiliate him or degrade him. He had I had the right to call witnesses if they could make a contribution to the sum total total of the knowledge of the Senate in an area where they proposed to legislate. I believe that. I believed it then I believe it now. Do you think the Ervin Committee, which of course had uh a bit came up with some legislation in the end, that it proposed but periodically the senators would say aren't you sorry you did this or should young people come to Washington and ?it became a Sunday school? office. There's no legislative purpose to that. And uh obviously you don't need to have

days and days of testimony which are soley related to culpability or non culpability to draft legislation. In other words I am against legislative trials. I've always been against legislative trials. I'm against the legislature whether it be the state legislature or the Congress deciding by legislative fiat the guilt or innocence of anyone. The whole question of the trial indictment if you will even of political figures raises a particularly difficult question of pretrial publicity because by definition these are our men in the news and their troubles become national news. There's no, it wouldn't make any sense talk about a change of venue in the United States with our national networks bringing this into the every region of the country. Did you do you think that the pretrial publicity was an ins- insurmountable problem or it was indeed surmounted

by the trials of the Watergate figures. Um I really believe in the jury system as I said to you earlier I believe in it. And I think that uh- even though there may be a small deposit in the test tube of the jurors mind when he goes into the box that the average American will rise above it and give his fellow American a fair trial. But what I do think we've carried too far, outrageously too far, is what I call the judicial filibuster where uh some judge will allow two three four six weeks to be taken to select the jury they psychoanalyze each juror. They try the whole case before the juror before they decide whether to take them or not that's outrageous. Are you against capital punishment? I've always been against. Why? it doesn't work. If it worked would you be for it. By work you mean deter. Well let me say I believe that punishment has two functions in the administration of justice, in that rehabilitates the defendant

hopefully and it deters others from committing the offense. Now obviously we can rule out rehabilitation in capital punishment and I can demonstrate overwhelmingly to you that it doesn't work because those states which have had it have the same incidence of murder as states which have the same socio ethnic composition, the same economic composition. And uh which have abolished. Some people think that one way to speed up and make more efficient and equitable the criminal justice system would be to eliminate what are called victimless crimes. Gambling for example or prostitution. They argue that the police are wasting their time arresting people who commit victimless crimes, the courts are wasting their time trying them. People like you the lawyers are wasting your time defending them and the prisons are being packed with people who

did commit victimless crimes. Do you have a general position on victimless crimes? I don't have a general view. Uh I think there are a number of victimless crimes which should be eliminated. I think it's ridiculous to have drunkenness a crime. We've got to deal with that problem in a different way. I think you know we're on a national binge at the moment such as we've never been on in our history with uh alcohol,?amphedamins? barbiturates, hallucinagenics and uh harder drugs cocaine and heroin. There seems to be a tremendous uh necessity for overwhelming numbers of our people to pull the shade on reality they think it's going to be better when the shade goes up but it's never any better. It's usually worse because nothing's been done about it. But I don't want to treat those people as criminals. I don't want to treat the users of drugs, the poor unfortunate bewildered users of drugs who want to block out

reality as criminals. Uh in the problem of sex offenses we have uh a a different area. I am troubled by by uh sex offenses. I certainly, of course, would preserve as criminal those sex offenses which involved uh minors. California is going to come to grips with that problem uh as involving consenting majors. It will be an interesting experiment from which we can learn. One of the reasons that people get angry and worry about the corruption of the law through the enforcement of the law is that say here over here on 14th Street where there are prostitutes they feel that the police to enforce laws against prostitution frequently get involved in entrapment and they do, and they do. Now which is worse for society

entrapment by police officers or prostitution. Oh I say a plague on both those institutions. I think they're both terrible. I think it's a terrible thing when we have to deploy police officers to go out and uh and try to ensnare uh prostitutes and we're even deploying police officers now, feminine police officers to go out and ensnare poor bewildered men who are walking the streets and who find themselves charged with offenses. I don't like that and I don't like any part of that in our society. When you have retired from active practice of law many years from now we will hope ,what would you most like to be remembered for, what do you think you will be remembered for? Well I think that I'd like to be remembered uh the way you'd like to be remembered. I'd like to be remembered for havin uh never made an effort in a court on behalf of a client which I did not do the very best

that I could do which I did not tax my capacity to its fullest and which I didn't uh exact from myself the most that I could give that case. Thank you. Non lawyers are apt to get their idea of the typical lawyer's life from the many courtroom dramas they see on television. The television lawyer deals with great issues in vivid personalities in dramatic situations. In fact, of course, most lawyers go from a law school through to retirement without any experience remotely resembling the high voltage episodes of Edward Bennett Williams career. He has risen to and stayed at the top of the legal profession in the lawyer city of Washington. Today with the legal profession low and declining,Williams enjoys a reputation as a gifted and public spirited advocate. Today lawyers need a lawyer, a skilled advocate to represent them. They have such an advocate in Edward Bennett Williams.

I'm George F. Will . For a transcript of tonight's program please send $1 to Assignment America WNET 13 Box 3 4 5. New York New York 1 0 0 1 9. 0.