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Inherit the mint; how Edward Bennett Williams made legal prostitution respectable - excerpt from 'The Man to See: Edward Bennett Williams - Legendary Trial Lawyer, Ultimate Insider
Washington Monthly, Oct, 1991 by Evan Thomas
Michael Milken, the junk bond king, looked stricken. The Justice Department was closing in on the empire he had built out of vision, guile, and larceny. Frightened, Milken had done what many powerful men had done when they had a serious problem. He had done what Senator Joseph McCarthy, Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mafia don Frank Costello, LBJ aide Bobby Baker, singer Frank Sinatra, Soviet spy Igor Melekh, industrialist Armand Hammer, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss, Playboy owner Hugh Hefner, Texas Governor John Connally, financier Robert Vesco, Senator Thomas Dodd, CIA Director Richard Helms, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, Reverend Sun-Young Moon, and President Gerald Ford had all done before him: He had gone to Edward Bennett Williams.
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Williams was not content to be just a great lawyer. He wanted power, and he wanted to be seen as a force for larger ends than the narrow representation of his clients. He was, at least in the beginning, an effective crusader for individual freedom. In the name of civil liberties and protecting the rights of the criminally accused, he helped spark a judicial revolution against unchecked police power in the fifties and sixties. Before anyone else, Williams exposed the illegal acts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation--the wiretapping, break-ins, buggings, and "black-bag jobs"--that were rotting J. Edgar Hoover's empire from within. Behind the scenes, he played a little-known but critical role in revealing and ultimately reining in the abusive power of Richard Nixon's White House. Williams not only urged Ben Bradlee to print the Pentagon Papers, he helped give The Washington Post editor the courage--and quite possibly, the inside information--to press forward with the newspaper's probe into Watergate when the rest of the establishment press was turning the other way.
Yet having exposed the abuse of power, Williams went on to protect it. Apparently without a second thought, Williams defended the very people exposed by the scandals that he had helped unearth. He defended a half dozen private and public powerbrokers from charges brought by the Watergate special prosecutor. He defended CIA Director Richard Helms against accusations that he had authorized an illegal break-in and lied to Congress. He defended the FBI's top specialist against charges of having performed black-bag jobs. And in the secret councils of the White House, he argued against restricting CIA eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.
Williams saw no irony in playing both sides. He was an advocate, and he was intent on winning. If he could expose a scandal and then turn around and get off the people embroiled in it, so much the better. He won both ways. He always had. In the fifties, he had represented communists and fellow travelers before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), while at the same time he represented the greatest red-baiter of them all, Senator Joe McCarthy. Throughout his career, Williams appeared to be involved in a variety of conflicts of interest. But he believed he could represent everyone's interests at once, and he often succeeded in finding a middle way. Certainly he served his own interests. His individual clients were almost always happy as well. But viewed from a distance of years, Williams's ceaseless maneuvering sometimes to add up to one vast zero-sum game.
Williams would defend anyone, he liked to say, as long as the client gave him total control of the case and paid up front. He would represent mafia dons and pornographers for enormous fees. He would also represent priests, judges, and attractive women in distress for little or nothing. Yet he did not like to represent clients who stood for causes. He thought it was a mistake to mix ideology with law and he worried that political activists would not give him the total control he demanded. He refused to represent Dr. Benjamin Spock and several other antiwar activists indicted for inciting students to burn their draft cards in 1970. "They don't need a lawyer," he scoffed. "They need a toastmaster."
But when necessary, Williams could sound like a true believer. Imploring William F. Buckley to aid in McCarthy's defense in 1954, Williams declared, "We've got to save Joe! It's important to save the country from the communist threat." Buckley recalls that he thought Williams was a "good 100 percent witch hunter." With arched eyebrows, he adds, "and two years later I discovered he was Mr. ACLU." (By 1955, Williams had put some distance between himself and the senator.)
When he had to defend himself, Williams could be very persuasive. The New York Times's Washington bureau chief, Arthur Krock, took a liking to Williams and invited him to dinner one night during the McCarthy censure hearings. Some other prominent reporters were there, and they started in on Williams for defending McCarthy. How could he defend such a terrible man? Williams was tired that night, and a little dour and defensive, recalls columnist Rowland Evans, another guest. After moodily listening to the badgering, he began, "Well, it's a funny thing. A doctor is driving along the road at night, and there's terrible accident. He rushes over. The driver is bloody. The doctor immediately tries to save his life. Or a priest is on a boat and he sees a passenger crushed by a boom. The priest runs over to administer last rites. Neither one of them has asked the character of the victim. But when a lawyer rushes in," Williams looked at his accusers, "this is what happens!" The dinner table quieted. The questioning stopped.
