The Book of Bastards

by Brian Thornton

  63

  ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR.

  His Own Replacement in Congress (1908–1972)

  “A man's respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of his paycheck.”

  — Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

  Born in Harlem to an energetic Abyssinian Baptist Church minister, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was an impressive man. He, too, was an ordained minister and the first black member of the New York City Council. Powell was also the first black congressman from the state of New York and one of the first from any state in the union since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. In 1937 he succeeded his father in his pulpit and began to work as a community organizer in his home neighborhood.

  As such he was a stellar figure. Harlem's personal representative in Congress, a tireless worker for civil rights, Powell insisted that black visitors be allowed to dine with him in the “Whites Only” Congressional dining room and that the use of the word “nigger” be banned on the House floor.

  He was also a tireless administrator, chairing the powerful House Education and Labor Committee in 1961. Working with President Lyndon B. Johnson, Powell even set a record for the number of bills to be introduced into legislation in a single session.

  And yet Powell ran afoul of House ethics rules. He abused his committee's budget to the tune of funding unauthorized overseas trips for himself. These included weekend getaways to a home he owned in the British Virgin Islands. He was also missing sessions of the committee he chaired. It all looked (and was) highly improper.

  By January 1967, the members of the House's Democratic leadership had seen enough. They stripped Powell of his chairmanship; a March 1 session of the entire body voted overwhelmingly to exclude Powell from the House.

  Rather than fight his expulsion, Powell ran in the special election organized to pick the replacement for his Congressional seat. He won.

  WHAT'S IN A NAME?

  Powell was married three times, and had a son with second wife, Hazel Scott, whom they named Adam Clayton Powell III. That son in turn had a son, whom he named Adam Clayton Powell IV. When Powell had a child with his third wife Yvette Diago, they named that boy Adam Clayton Powell Diago. When Powell Diago later ran for the New York State Assembly he changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV, even though he already had a nephew by that same name! And speaking of Diago, she moved back home to Puerto Rico in 1961, and lived there full-time until 1967. During those six years she drew a salary as a Congressional aide for her husband, even though she wasn't in the United States and did not work for the congressman.

  The House refused to seat him. This time Powell went to court. In its 1969 decision on the case Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, stating that Congress did not have the Constitutional right to exclude him. So Powell went back to Congress, but he lost his seniority. He also went back to skipping sessions, rarely showing up even just to vote.

  In 1970 Powell lost a primary challenge to a young Charlie Wrangell, the man who has held Powell's seat ever since, and who himself is no stranger to public controversy. Powell retired to the Bahamas and died in a Miami hospital in 1972. Despite the lackluster end to his Congressional career, Powell is memorialized by (among other things) the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office, which sits on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. in Harlem.

  64

  ABE FORTAS

  Your Personal Supreme Court Justice — for a $20,000 Fee (1910–1982)

  “There's an old Russian saying that you don't roll up your pants until you get to the river. There should be a very comprehensive statement by Fortas. He owes it to the court and the country.”

  — Former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler

  Abe Fortas had an established career as a star lawyer: after all, he had been the primary attorney in several cases argued before the Supreme Court, including the landmark 1962 case Gideon v. Wainright, which established a citizen's right to legal representation. He was also a lifelong friend and confidante of President Lyndon B. Johnson. So when he was confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1965, Fortas seemed to have a long career on the Supreme Court ahead of him. Neither he nor anyone close to him could have foreseen his resignation under fire a short four years later.

  This was partly because no justice had ever been successfully impeached for any reason during the long history of the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, since the Democratic Republicans had gone after Samuel Chase in 1804, no one had even bothered to try. Thanks to Fortas, all of that was about to change.

  The first cloud on the horizon came when Johnson nominated Fortas to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1968. During the confirmation discussions in the Senate, concerns arose about a series of speeches that Fortas had given at American University. Fortas had been paid $15,000 for the speeches, but the university had not paid these fees: a number of private corporations had. If these companies ever had a case tried before the high court, Fortas's relationship to them could create a conflict of interest. These concerns helped derail his nomination.

  A year later the revelation that he had signed a personal services contract with a $20,000 retainer from the personal foundation of a Wall Street financier was the final blow that finished Fortas's judicial career. The contract called for Fortas to receive $20,000 per year in addition to his retainer for the rest of his life. In exchange for this remuneration Fortas was to give “advice” to the family paying him.

  “It was difficult for most people to fathom why Fortas, an astute attorney and author of a recent book that begins ‘I am a man of the law,’ would so jeopardize his position,” A Time magazine article noted at the time. “Fortas's many connections in high places have gained him a reputation for wheeling and dealing in areas not uncommon for a corporate lawyer but of questionable propriety for a Supreme Court Justice. One fellow lawyer described Fortas as simply ‘avaricious.’”

  And that's the really interesting part. It's true that $20,000 was not then and still isn't a small sum of money. But compared to the $150,000 per year that Fortas's law firm paid him before he was tapped for the high court, it's a drop in the bucket.

  What's more, Fortas's own wife, also an attorney, was still employed at his old firm and bringing in $100,000 per year herself. It's not exactly as if Fortas needed the extra money. In the end, regardless of what it amounted to, Fortas took the money for the same reason so many other infamous bastards have done so: because he thought he could do it without suffering adverse consequences as a result. Turned out he was half right.

  In the end the entire sordid affair amounted to an enormous conflict of interest, and since Johnson had left office that year, he was unable to save his old friend. Already wounded by the American University speakers' fees revelations, Fortas resigned on May 14, 1969.

  He spent the next thirteen years until his death practicing law in Washington, D.C.

  “Judging is a lonely job in which a man is, as near as may be, an island entire.”

  — Abe Fortas

  65

  RICHARD HELMS

  Perjury as the Price of Honor (1913–2002)

  “Nobody knows everything about everything.”

  — Richard Helms

  Here's a hot one for you: the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was once convicted of perjury, and it was the fault of the president of the United States! The director in question? Career “Company” man Richard Helms. The president? Ol' Tricky Dick himself: Richard M. Nixon.

  This is what happened.

  Helms was one of the agency professionals who advanced into the Company's upper echelons after the Bay of Pigs debacle gave President John F. Kennedy the excuse he need to purge the “Old Guard” of Allen Dulles and his protégés from the CIA's leadership. In 1963 Helms went to Vietnam and helped overthrow President Ngo Dinh Diem. Within a year he was a deputy director. In 1966 President Johnson appointed him director.

  It was no secret that Dick Helms loathed Dick N
ixon. After Nixon became president in 1969, Helms spent most of his time trying to keep the agency out of Nixon's way. The president wanted to use them for every political “dirty trick” he could think of to keep his “enemies” under his thumb. When the Watergate scandal broke, Helms successfully kept the CIA from getting sucked into that public controversy as well, refusing to post bail for the Watergate burglars with secret CIA funds.

  But Nixon still managed to pull the agency in the direction in which he wanted to go and compromised Helms at the same time. In 1973 Nixon insisted that the CIA assist in a Chilean coup to oust democratically elected, socialist President Salvadore Allende. Helms made sure that the takedown was successful.

  By now Nixon infuriated Helms, and the CIA director did his best to keep the Company clear of Nixon's petty wars with the rest of the known world. He clearly realized that Nixon had dug his own grave with Watergate and saw the writing on the wall: that if Helms himself wasn't careful, he could be forced out along with Nixon when his turn came.

  So when Nixon suggested later that same year that Helms become the U.S. ambassador to Iran, Helms accepted the nomination and resigned as CIA director. Helms and Iran's ruling monarch, the Shah, had enjoyed a good relationship since their days spent in prep school together. He served as ambassador from 1973 to 1976.

  A problem arose when it came to light that Helms had lied under oath while in the midst of his Senate confirmation hearing for his new post. When asked pointblank whether the CIA had assisted in Allende's overthrow that same year, Helms had lied and said no, because the matter was still classified.

  In 1977 Helms was convicted of perjury as a result of his testimony before Congress. He considered the conviction a mark of honor, because he'd kept the secrets despite the consequences. His $2,000 fine was paid by friends in the CIA. President Ronald Reagan awarded Helms the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982.

  Shortly before his death in 2002, Helms did something he'd previously sworn never to do: he wrote his autobiography. In it he broke no new ground and defended his participation in the coup that ousted and killed Chilean President Salvador Allende, as necessary “to preserve the Democratic constitutional system.” Never mind the fact that Allende was elected by his own people and that the military goons who replaced him were right-wingers bordering on fascist in their political beliefs.

  66

  DANIEL ELLSBERG

  “The Most Dangerous Man in America” (1931– )

  “We could kill him….”

  — Richard M. Nixon

  They say that the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top. Perhaps the most famous stateside leaker is Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND Corporation economist who worked on a top-secret government study entitled the “History of United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945–1967.” Today we know this infamous collection of information as the Pentagon Papers. The disturbing findings revealed over the course of the report's seven thousand pages prompted Ellsberg to smuggle the classified papers out of the office. He then photocopied them and leaked them to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1969. This massive doorstop of secrets revealed the Vietnam War as unwinnable by the very people running it.

  WHY THE BASTARD DID IT

  Ellsberg got the idea to leak the Pentagon Papers at one of the anti-war events he'd begun to frequent even while still working for RAND Corporation on the study. A draft resister spoke movingly about choosing to go to prison rather than choosing to fight in Vietnam. Inspired by the young man's passion and commitment, Ellsberg realized that if he leaked the study he might be able to help put an end to what he now saw as an unjust and unwinnable war. He felt he faced a similar moral dilemma: choose to go to prison for telling the truth or choose to support the war in Vietnam by staying silent.

  Ellsberg didn't stop there. Disillusioned by government and inspired by the antiwar movement, he leaked the Pentagon Papers again two years later — only this time he handed them over to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and more than a dozen other publications.

  All hell broke loose when the New York Times published the first installment of the study. The media milked the revelations of the Nixon administration cover-ups about the extent of our nation's involvement in the war — up to and including the bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The Nixon administration charged Ellsberg with espionage and fought the media all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  POSTSCRIPT

  In the wake of the Watergate scandal, all charges against Ellsberg were dismissed. He went on to become a leading antinuclear activist. He was arrested more than sixty times in conjunction with his new cause. Henry Kissinger once called Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.” And as the creator of The Truth Telling Project, which calls upon all federal employees to expose government lies, he may still be. Traitor or hero? You decide.

  The government got an injunction against the Times in federal court, but failed to get one against the Post. The cases were consolidated and heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as New York Times Co. v. United States. In a 6–3 decision, the high court ruled that the injunction against the Times violated the First Amendment, ruling that the government failed to show that “grave and irreparable harm” would result were the injunction not granted.

  Back at the White House, John Ehrlichman authorized “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1,” designed to discredit Ellsberg. On September 3, 1971, about a month after the Supreme Court ruling, G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and three CIA agents broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in a vain effort to obtain evidence against him.

  Sure, it sounds like something out of a movie. Former hawk risks a life in prison to hand over top-secret documents revealing the Vietnam War as unwinnable to the media, hoping it'll help end the war. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life. And it set the stage for the most devastating of all American political scandals: Watergate.

  “We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.”

  — Daniel Ellsberg

  67

  SPIRO AGNEW

  Bribery Brouhaha Brings Down Babbling, Bloviating Bastard (1918–1996)

  “No assassin in his right mind would kill me. They know if they did that they would wind up with Agnew!”

  — Richard Nixon

  Spiro T. Agnew was governor of Maryland when presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon picked him to be his running mate in 1968. Republicans gave Agnew the nod because they hoped that a moderate from a quasi-Southern state like Maryland would keep the Deep South happy without alienating Northern voters. In selecting Agnew as his running mate, Nixon extolled the Maryland governor's virtues: “[Agnew] has real depth and genuine warmth. He has the attributes of a statesman of the first rank.”

  Once sworn in as vice president, however, Agnew quickly lost Nixon's respect. Nixon didn't think Agnew smart enough to be vice president. Nixon's Oval Office tapes reveal that he had thought about kicking Agnew off of the ticket for the 1972 election and replacing him with former Texas governor and then Treasury Secretary John Connally, who had also been governor of Texas earlier in his career. The president and his trusted staffer H. R. Haldeman hatched ingenious plans to dump Agnew, including coming up with the idea of giving Agnew a television station to run.

  Agnew saved Nixon the trouble, however. He was forced to resign on October 10, 1973, when he pled no contest to a single charge of tax evasion. It all began with a bribery scandal during his time as the governor of Maryland. As it turned out, Agnew had been taking steady payoffs of nearly $150,000 over a ten-year period while he was governor. He received his last $17,500 “balloon payment” bribe after he was sworm in as vice president! In return for the single plea, Agnew agreed to resign as vice president. Later, a lawsuit filed by a group of George Washington University law students forced Agnew to repay the state of Maryland the nearly $300,000 he took in bribes.

  BABBLING BASTARD BLOVIATING BUMPTIOUSLY

  As vice president, Agnew
claimed to represent the silent majority of Americans who did not protest the Vietnam War. He put two speechwriters — future Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan and future New York Times opinion columnist William Safire — to work writing colorful speeches. He attacked his political opponents and many journalists as “pusillanimous pussyfooters” and “nattering nabobs of negativism,” among other alliterative epithets. Agnew relished his role as Nixon's “attack dog,” giving speeches blasting Vietnam War protesters as “un-American.”

  Agnew tried to rehabilitate his reputation years later when he published a memoir entitled Go Quietly … or Else. In the book, he claimed that Nixon and his aides had threatened to have him killed if he didn't resign as vice president. He also claimed to have been framed and that he had never taken a bribe. Released from attorney — client privilege by this claim, Agnew's attorney stated flatly that his client had lied.

  After leaving office Agnew moved to California and developed another career as an international dealmaker. He helped oil-rich Arab sheiks acquire foreign business and made millions in the process. He died in 1996.

  “Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages.”

  — Spiro Agnew

  68

  RICHARD M. NIXON

  Impeachable Bastard (1913–1994)

  “Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.”