Paul Warnke Text of Interview: March 19, 2001

1 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – FIRST INTERVIEW MARCH 19, 2001 This is the first interview of the Oral History of Paul C. Warnke as part of the Oral History Project of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society. It is being held by William Warfield Ross on Monday, March 19, 2001. The tape and any transcripts made from the tape are confidential and governed by the wishes of Mr. Warnke which ultimately will be made in the form of a written donative instrument. Mr. Ross: If you don’t mind, I will call you Paul. Mr. Warnke: Please. Mr. Ross: You can call me Bill. Mr. Warnke: Right. I had planned to. Mr. Ross: You were born I believe — Mr. Warnke: January 31, 1920. Mr. Ross: 1920, and was it in Connecticut? Mr. Warnke: It was in Webster, Massachusetts. Mr. Ross: Massachusetts, pardon me. Tell me about your birthplace and the — Mr. Warnke: My father ran shoe factories, and he was running one in Webster, Massachusetts, so I was born there in 1920. My mother came from Maine, and they met in Massachusetts, and I was the second child. I had an older sister named Ruth, who died on January 1 of this year, and two other siblings; one other sister, who is still alive, lives here, and a brother, Frank, who was killed in Antwerp back in 1988, hit by a car. 2 Mr. Ross: So, you have one living — Mr. Warnke: One living sibling. Mr. Ross: And do you have any memories of your grandparents? Where did your people come from on both sides? Mr. Warnke: My grandfather Warnke was born in Germany, I think, in Marienwerder, Germany, which is now part of Poland, but he was from a German Catholic family, and they were pushed east during the war. Mr. Ross: That was the war being World War I. Mr. Warnke: No, no, it was long before that — the religious wars of the 17th century. Mr. Ross: All right. Mr. Warnke: He came to the United States and married a girl by the name of Bridget O’Grady. Mr. Ross: So, you have Irish — Mr. Warnke: She was the first one of her family born here rather than Ireland. So, I’m one quarter German and three quarters Irish. Mr. Ross: Tell me about those origins. Give me a sense of how you think they affected you. I mean, we’re all immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: And, in subtle ways, the kinds of persons we are depends on whether we came from Thailand or Germany or Ireland. Mr. Warnke: Right. Well, my grandmother, Bridget O’Grady, Bridget O’Grady 3 Warnke, was the only grandparent I ever knew, and she was great. She used to tell me stories, some true, although quite a bit invented, and she died fairly old. She was about 73, which back in those days was old. My mother came from Canada, and her family was Canadian and Scotch Irish, and her name was Culliton. Mr. Ross: Did your grandmother, that would have been your grandmother on your father’s side — was she an educated woman? Mr. Warnke: No. Self-educated. Mr. Ross: Self-educated, and were you very close to her? Mr. Warnke: I was. She was fun. Mr. Ross: What are your memories and your feelings about your mother and father? Mr. Warnke: Dad died quite young. Dad was only about 53, and Dad was great. He was very warm hearted, and he had never graduated from high school, but ended up running a chain of factories. I think he had one factory in Webster, two in Marlborough and a couple in Maine. And he was very successful, very literate, great reader, and whenever he went on a trip, he’d bring back a book for each of us. Mr. Ross: Do you think that some of your intellectual interests, your emotional drives, and so on come from him? Mr. Warnke: Come from him and from Mother. Mr. Ross: What was she like? Mr. Warnke: Mother was quite opinionated and quite strong, sort of hard to describe. They were both deeply insistent on our being well educated, and I was brought up a 4 Catholic, so I planned to go to Boston College, and one day my father came home and said, “Why don’t you go to Yale?” That had never occurred to me, but it turned out that one of his suppliers was a fellow by the name of Lapham. The Lapham Field House at the Yale Bowl is named after him. So he said, “Why don’t you consider Yale?” Mr. Ross: I’d like to wait on your college. Tell me what was it like to be growing up and your first schooling. What can you capture about the atmosphere of the life that you and young people of your age had in, what was it, Webster? Mr. Warnke: I was brought up in Marlborough. Mr. Ross: Marlborough. Mr. Warnke: As I say, I was born in Webster and when I was about four, I think it was, Dad became head of the factories and moved to Marlborough. So, I was brought up in Marlborough. And Marlborough was strictly a factory town. There were a lot of Italians, a lot of French Canadians, a lot of Irish, and some old line Yankees. And, I went first of all to the Immaculate Conception School, which was a Catholic grammar school, and I was regarded as sort of teacher’s pet because Dad was a big employer in town, and he was very nice to the nuns, so the nuns were very nice to me. Mr. Ross: That’s a good thing. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. It was very interesting. My eighth grade teacher by the name of Sister Maureen — she read an article in a magazine one time just before the Carter Administration, and it was an article written by a friend of mine, Les Gelb, and it listed various people that might be Secretary of State, and it listed me, George Ball, and Cyrus Vance. And, among the other things, it said “religious preference: nonsectarian,” and I got a letter from Sister 5 Maureen, which said, “I’m happy to see that you haven’t become a Protestant.” Mr. Ross: Did you have some best friends? Mr. Warnke: Yes, I had a lot of friends. Two of my best were Jackie Soldani, who obviously was Italian, and the other one was Anastosius Diamantis, who was Greek. Mr. Ross: So, you got some very cultural — Mr. Warnke: Oh, very, yes — multicultural, no question about it. Mr. Ross: Apart from your schooling and the nuns, what were the things you liked to do? Mr. Warnke: I was very interested in sports and followed it all very closely, including things like golf, which I’ve never played. Golf, tennis — Bill Tilden was the big tennis player — and football, which I followed very carefully. And baseball, I was a real baseball enthusiast. Mr. Ross: Did you play any of these? Mr. Warnke: I was a lousy, lousy athlete. I played most of them, but I was very poor. Mr. Ross: So was I. Mr. Warnke: I had very poor coordination. Mr. Ross: I have bad “hand to eye.” Mr. Warnke: Yes, yes, that’s right. Mr. Ross: I’m going to move on to the high school in just a minute. Did you have feelings while you were in grade school about what you wanted to do with yourself? Mr. Warnke: Really nothing that made an awful lot of sense. I had a lot of friends 6 who were sons and daughters of doctors, so I assumed I was going to be a doctor. I even took premedical in college. I always knew I was going to go to college. Mr. Ross: Why is that? Mr. Warnke: Because there was no question about it, I mean, my mother and dad were just insistent that we all go to college. Mr. Ross: And, neither of them — Mr. Warnke: Neither one of them had gone to college. They were both great readers. Mr. Ross: Do you remember a book you read in the grade school years that made a big impact on you? Mr. Warnke: I read so many, Bill, that none of them made that much of an impact. Mr. Ross: When did you start reading? Mr. Warnke: I started reading the year before I went to grammar school. My sister Ruth decided I should read, so she had me read. I can remember reading, I forget what it was, Jack and the Beanstalk, I think it was, and I couldn’t understand why father was “father” rather than “fat her.” Mr. Ross: Good point. Mr. Warnke: As far as schooling was concerned, as I say, I went to the Immaculate Conception School, and that was pretty good. There were some very, very good nuns. A lot of them were Irish born and a lot of them had become nuns to be educated. Mr. Ross: Well. Mr. Warnke: Yes, and they were quite good. Sister Adanada, I can recall, was 7 very bright. A few of them were beasts. Sister Joseph Catherine, I thought, was a real sadist, but Sister Maureen was a good friend. Mr. Ross: Do you feel that that experience of a Catholic boyhood marks you in any way? I don’t mean bad or good, I just mean influenced you. Mr. Warnke: Not really. I always had my doubts about religion from a very early age on, so it never really took. Mr. Ross: So, you are not a practicing Catholic. Mr. Warnke: Oh, no, no. Mr. Ross: You’re secular as you say. Mr. Warnke: I am, that’s right. Mr. Ross: Are there other things that come into your mind at that period of your life that you’d like to memorialize or say anything about? Mr. Warnke: One thing that was difficult was that the Depression came along, and, as a consequence, Dad had to shut down the factory from time to time, and since many of my classmates were people whose fathers worked in the factories, that made it kind of a traumatic experience. Mr. Ross: I bet it did. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: And you were aware, you were sensitive to that. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes, very sensitive. I had to fight my way home a lot of times. Mr. Ross: What was your dad into in 1941? Mr. Warnke: Shoes. 8 Mr. Ross: And, did you go to the factory and watch — Mr. Warnke: Yes, yes, right. I tried to get a job there, but Dad figured that jobs were too hard to get, so he wasn’t going to have one of his sons taking a job that somebody else could take. Mr. Ross: You went to high school. What happened? Mr. Warnke: It was a lousy high school. Marlborough was a lousy high school. There were all kinds of grammar schools in town. There was a French Catholic. There was the regular Catholic. There was the public school. And there was a Greek school. And they all had separate grammar schools, and we all got together in high school. I can recall still with great delight when the French Canadian girls showed up. Mr. Ross: When they what? Mr. Warnke: When the French Canadian girls showed up. Mr. Ross: Showed up. Mr. Warnke: They were so pretty. Mr. Ross: You liked those. Mr. Warnke: I liked them. Mr. Ross: Did you have a girl friend? Mr. Warnke: Yes, I had a couple of girl friends. My principal girl friend was not from Marlborough. We went in the summertime to Scituate, Massachusetts, on the South Shore and I had a girl friend by the name of Miriam Flynn. She was a red head with green eyes. Mr. Ross: Sounds good. Mr. Warnke: Yes. 9 Mr. Ross: Do you know where she is now? Mr. Warnke: She still lives in the Boston area. Mr. Ross: So, you had one girl friend, and you had others that you were interested in. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: When you started in high school, this was no longer a Catholic school. Mr. Warnke: Oh, no. Mr. Ross: It was a general public — Mr. Warnke: A general public school. Mr. Ross: And, your impression, obviously lasting impression, was that this was not a particularly good school. Mr. Warnke: Oh, it was a very poor school. Mr. Ross: Tell me about that. Tell me about how you lived in that experience and things that you think were significant about those four years for your development. Mr. Warnke: I think that the principal thing was that it never really was a big part of my education. Most of my education was brought about by the fact that I was a great reader, and that when we were very young my family bought something called the Books of Knowledge. Mr. Ross: Oh, yes. Mr. Warnke: Which was an encyclopedia for younger people. I read that voraciously, and I learned a great deal from that — a lot of history, a lot of English literature. Mr. Ross: So, you were, in a sense, being self-educated while you were going 10 to this high school. Was there a teacher or even a fellow student who was significant in your feelings? Mr. Warnke: I can’t recall any of the teachers. There were a couple of women teachers who were pretty good, but by and large it was a very, very poor school. The students were principally factory kids. A lot of them spoke very poor English and ended up after four years still speaking very poor English. Very few of them went to college. I think that — I doubt that less than ten of my graduating class went to college. Mr. Ross: How large was the class? Mr. Warnke: A couple of hundred. Mr. Ross: That’s a very small ratio. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And, yet you became a brilliantly educated man, if I may say so. Mr. Warnke: I almost flunked out my first year at Yale. I had no idea how to study. I’d sit there in class and see everybody scribbling; I thought they were writing notes home. They were taking notes instead. So, when it came to the first exams, I had no notes, and I flunked every one. Mr. Ross: That’s an interesting experience. Mr. Warnke: Yes, very interesting experience. The question was: Was I going to be able to stay at Yale? And Dad came down, and it was sort of touch and go, but then I discovered the thing to do was to take notes. So, I took notes, and the next term I got on the Dean’s List, and found that the Dean’s List meant that you could go to class when you wanted to, you could stay home when you wanted to. 11 Mr. Ross: Wow. Mr. Warnke: So, I stayed on the Dean’s List from that time on. Those are called incentives. Mr. Ross: Did you play sports? Mr. Warnke: I played baseball very poorly. Mr. Ross: Sounds like me. Mr. Warnke: I played so badly that they put me in left field against left-handed hitters and right field against right-handed hitters. Mr. Ross: Did you enjoy that? Mr. Warnke: I did. I loved sports, loved them. I tried playing football. I didn’t even stay on the junior varsity. Mr. Ross: Think back and tell me — you were growing up, you were interested in girls, of course, you were interested in sports, you were obviously reading, as you say. How did you put this all together? Mr. Warnke: How did I put it all together? Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: I don’t think I ever did. Mr. Ross: When you were coming out of the chute at the end going to Yale, you were a certain kind of person, and that was the result of many things, including your high school experience. You have any thoughts about that. Mr. Warnke: I was sort of a rube, but Yale had a lot of rubes back in those days. Most of the class at that point went to private schools, an awful lot from Andover, Exeter, St. 12 Mark’s, and a minority went to high school. Mr. Ross: You were in the minority. Mr. Warnke: I was in the minority. Mr. Ross: How did you feel about that? Mr. Warnke: It didn’t bother me much. Mr. Ross: Did you enter a secret society? Mr. Warnke: I didn’t even know what they were. Someone came around one night and asked me if I was going to be rushed, and I had no idea what they were talking about. So, I missed my opportunity. Mr. Ross: Such as it was. You could have been “Bones.” Your life would have been very different. Mr. Warnke: I don’t think so. I don’t think it would have made a damn bit of difference. Mr. Ross: Well, I think we’re moving on to Yale. Tell me what it felt like to be a freshman at Yale. Mr. Warnke: I enjoyed it thoroughly, I really did. For one thing I liked being in what to me was a big city. So, at night I walked around the entire city, and reveled in it. And I enjoyed my classmates. I made a number of friends. Mr. Ross: Did you find that the educational experience at Yale — I’m talking now about both the informal and the formal — meshed with the better life you had constructed for yourself? Mr. Warnke: I thought it great, yes. 13 Mr. Ross: Did you think Yale was a good school? Mr. Warnke: I thought it was a very good school. It had very good professors back in those days. Mr. Ross: I had a classmate in the law school, Eddie Rockefeller, who was a long-time partner of mine in law practice — Mr. Warnke: Right. I know him well. Mr. Ross: He says all the really important things he learned in Yale he learned out of class. Mr. Warnke: I didn’t feel that way. I learned a lot in class. Mr. Ross: Did you have any romantic attachments in Yale? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Were these with girls who went to other colleges in New England? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Yale was not coeducational at that point. Mr. Ross: Tell me a little bit about that. What are your memories, good or bad? Mr. Warnke: All good. I liked girls. Mr. Ross: Can you be a bit more detailed? Mr. Warnke: I was in the Yale Glee Club. And we used to travel quite a bit, and we’d go up to places like Vassar and Smith and Wellesley, and they had a female glee club, and we mingled fairly closely. Mr. Ross: I’d like you just to go ahead in free association about college years. Mr. Warnke: As I say, when I went there, I was totally unprepared. The only thing I had going for me was that I had been a very voracious reader. And I loved that about Yale. 14 And the Linonia Brothers Room at the Yale Library. Mr. Ross: I spent a lot of time there. It’s right across the street from the Law School. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. So, I spent a great deal of time there. Mr. Ross: Reading French novels. Mr. Warnke: Reading almost anything. Anything that came to hand — Mr. Ross: — you could pull down from the shelf. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s right. Right. And I had a good friend by the name of John Schreiner, who lived a floor below me during my freshman year, and he and I used to spend a great deal of time at the gym. So, every afternoon we’d go to the gym, and try to knock one another down with a medicine ball. Mr. Ross: The “Temple of Health.” Mr. Warnke: That’s right. And then, he had a sister, and she was quite a bit younger, but she and I became very good friends. In fact, I was going very steadily with her when I met Jean. Mr. Ross: Did you meet Jean while you were still in Yale? Mr. Warnke: Oh, no. I met Jean when I went to law school. Mr. Ross: Tell me about law school. Mr. Warnke: I went to law school because I had countless years of free education under the GI Bill of Rights. And I had taken pre-med at college and had planned to go to medical school, but then it turned out among other things I have a tremor that’s sort of an inborn tremor, known as the “Warnke shake.” And I figured that anybody who saw me with that shake 15 wouldn’t want me as a doctor. So, after the War, I did not go to medical school, and I went up to Columbia to join the School of Journalism. And I went up there and they said, “Sorry, the class is full.” So, I said, “What other schools do you have?” They said, “The law school is across the street.” So, I went across the street and became a lawyer. Mr. Ross: Please go on. Mr. Warnke: One of my good friends in my freshman year at law school was a guy by the name of George Rowe and when we both got on Law Review, he said, “I think I’ll ask my sister up for the party.” So, he invited his sister up, and I looked across the room and said, “Gosh, she looks just like George.” And then I looked again and thought, “No, better.” That was Jean. So, then I had to break off my engagement. No, I got her to break it off. And then Jean and I became very good friends. I got married. My entire life has been actually that woman. Mr. Ross: Before we go any further I would like to talk about the donation which we discussed earlier — Mr. Warnke: Feel perfectly free. Mr. Ross: We’re supposed to put this on the tape. My understanding — you correct me if I’m wrong — is that you are agreeable in the event of your death or illness — Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: — that prevents you from approving all or any part of this tape, you are agreeable to allowing the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit, the freedom to publish or not publish, withhold or not, in their best judgment any part of this tape. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: All right. Thank you very much, sir. 16 Mr. Warnke: What I would say is that, if I haven’t reviewed it, I would hope that you would point out that I had not reviewed it. Mr. Ross: We would certainly do that. Mr. Warnke: Apart from that, feel perfectly free. Mr. Ross: It sounds like you had what the British call a “good war.” Mr. Warnke: A very good war, yes. You see, I was single, and as a consequence, I didn’t really worry. Mr. Ross: I understand. Life is less complicated — Mr. Warnke: There weren’t any kids; I’ve been scared stiff ever since. Fortunately, I’m now 81, so it doesn’t matter, but when I was young, I had high blood pressure, and I was turned down for insurance, and I figured “Holy Cow,” and I ended up with five kids — Mr. Ross: And a lot of years when you weren’t insured. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. A lot of years. Mr. Ross: You came out of the service, went to the Harvard Law School — Mr. Warnke: No, I went to Columbia Law School. Mr. Ross: Columbia Law School, pardon me. How did you decide to go to Columbia? Mr. Warnke: I lived in New York. My family lived in New York. And, as I said, I took a subway up to Columbia, tried to join the School of Journalism, they said it was full, they said the law school was across the street, so I went across the street. My life is an entire series of accidents. Mr. Ross: Tell me about your first year in law school. 17 Mr. Warnke: Well, I had to take an exam to get in because my marks in college had been too up and down. So, I took an exam and got in. And everybody was surprised that at the end of the first term, I had two A’s and two A+’s. Mr. Ross: Wow. Mr. Warnke: So, I figured I’d stay. Mr. Ross: What were your impressions of Columbia? This is again another world. Mr. Warnke: It was great. The professors were very good, and the class was very good. We were all fairly old in our late twenties. Mr. Ross: Very mature. Mr. Warnke: Yes, almost everyone had been through the war. I think there was one girl and one guy who was a prodigy. Mr. Ross: Was this ’48 that you went in? Mr. Warnke: ’46. I got out in ’48. Mr. Ross: Right. What were your feelings about the law school curriculum? Mr. Warnke: It was great. I was perfectly satisfied with law school. There were very good professors and a very good class. I made a lot of friends, including Jean’s brother. Mr. Ross: Let me see if I can stir you up a little bit. What were the bad times about that experience? Mr. Warnke: I can’t recall anything bad. Mr. Ross: You’re pretty resistant. Mr. Warnke: No, I don’t. 18 Mr. Ross: I used to work for a man, Lee Rankin, whom you might know. One of his best friends asked me how did I like working for Mr. Rankin — he was Solicitor General — Mr. Warnke: I know. I recall. Mr. Ross: I was very tactful, but he finally dug it out of me. He said, “Well, what kind of a lawyer do you think he was?” And I said, “He was a special kind of lawyer” and so forth. We finally agreed that he had a magnificent temperament, which he did. I suspect you have that kind of temperament, or do you? Mr. Warnke: What do you mean? Mr. Ross: A magnificent temperament? Mr. Warnke: I have no idea. Mr. Ross: You were comfortable with yourself. Mr. Warnke: No, we had very good professors in law school. Herbert Wechsler was very good and Walter Gellhorn. Mr. Ross: I knew him quite well. And did you make some good friends? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: Friends you’ve had. Mr. Warnke: Yes. The guy who was the chairman of the Law Review before me was Larry Latto. And Larry is still a very good friend. Mr. Ross: A smart guy. Mr. Warnke: Very smart guy. And Arthur Murphy was in the class below me. Mr. Ross: Oh, my. Mr. Warnke: Yes. A good friend. And, then there’s George Rowe and Wally 19 Dempsey. Mr. Ross: Columbia in those days was oriented towards business law in preparation for working in a large New York law firm. Mr. Warnke: Yes, I think so. Mr. Ross. What was your career orientation when you were in law school? Mr. Warnke: I really had no idea. When I went into Columbia, I was still very interested in the foreign service, and I interviewed for the foreign service, and then all of a sudden, I took the law exams and did very well. Then, I went to the law school and did very well, so I became a lawyer instead of a foreign service officer. Mr. Ross: A foreign service officer or a doctor. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Right. Oh, I had given up the idea of a doctor long before that. Mr. Ross: You were on the Law Review as I recall. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: What is the piece of writing you did during those years, writing or scholarship that you remember? Mr. Warnke: I don’t really recall. I had to write an article to get on Law Review, and then I was an editor-in-chief, so I principally supervised —- Mr. Ross: — writing. Mr. Warnke: That’s right — rather than writing. Rather than writing, I re-wrote. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you — I’m going to try to be a little bit more penetrating because I think you’re a tough, old dog. Will you describe your success in becoming editor-in- 20 chief and your success in law school. Mr. Warnke: I did very, very well in my writing. And, I think that, plus the fact that I’m not unpleasant. Mr. Ross: Do you have a good people sense? Mr. Warnke: Yes. And I enjoyed being on Law Review. I enjoyed my colleagues. Mr. Ross: And that’s followed you, I think, all through your career. Mr. Warnke: It was fun. I liked it. Mr. Ross: Well, we’re going to pick up some dark shades as we go along, but I think it’s going to be difficult. Mr. Warnke: Right. I’ll try. Mr. Ross: When did you marry your wife? Mr. Warnke: When did I marry her? Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: Let’s see. I came down here in 1948. And we were engaged by that point. And we got married in September of 1948. Mr. Ross: And you went into Covington? Mr. Warnke: Covington & Burling. Went to work for Tommy Austern. Mr. Ross: I know him well. Everybody who has had an association with Tommy has Tommy stories. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Tell me about him. Tell me about how you worked with him. Mr. Warnke: Well, when I started work with him, everyone said, “Oh, my God, 21 you’re going to hate it. He’s impossible to get along with.” We became very close friends. In fact, my oldest son is named Tommy. Mr. Ross: Brilliant guy. Mr. Warnke: Yes. And very nice. Mr. Ross: Well, I wouldn’t say that. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: You think so? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: My work was on the cigarette legal committee with Tommy. We represented Lorillard. You represented Reynolds, and also the — Mr. Warnke: — Tobacco Institute. Mr. Ross: Tobacco Institute. Very interesting experience. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: I think we’re close to concluding this session. You obviously had a knack then (and now) in being yourself in a very complete sense, and yet working out a way of relating to other people that was always successful. This is partly in temperament I would assume. It’s obviously partly a calculated skill. Talk to me about that, because this is a motif in your life. Mr. Warnke: I really don’t know what to say. I haven’t consciously striven to be anything except myself. Mr. Ross: Right. Maybe that’s one of the keys. I was in Covington as a law clerk, working for Paul Shorb. 22 Mr. Warnke: Oh, really. Mr. Ross: ’50 and ’51. Paul died, so I didn’t stay. So, I have a little bit of familiarity with the atmosphere. Old Mr. Burling and some other characters — Mr. Warnke: John Lord O’Brian. Mr. Ross: O’Brian gave me some advice when I needed it. And then those blazing personalities, Sapienza and Barlow. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: When I worked for Shorb, I found out after he died that we weren’t in the same firm as the other tax — Mr. Warnke: That’s correct. That’s right. Mr. Ross: And I understood for the first time why my instructions were never to show anything to Barlow’s people — I couldn’t understand it. I was naive. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Talk about that, because that was an interesting place. Mr. Warnke: I thought it was a very pleasant place. It was the only place I applied to and I didn’t like Wall Street. And I came down here. Covington & Burling, which was then Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb, was then a very friendly place and everybody got along. At least I thought they got along. And the young people were fun. And the people I worked with were a lot of fun, like Tommy, Graham Claytor — Mr. Ross: Yes, smart guy. Mr. Warnke: Yes, he was. What was funny was when Graham Claytor and John Lord O’Brian represented the Commissioner of Baseball and neither one of them knew anything 23 about baseball. I remember watching a game on television with them. Graham Claytor — the guy stood up at the plate, and the ball went by and it went by again and it went by again and it went by again; then, he went to first base — said, “Why did he go to first base, he didn’t even swing?” The concept of a base on balls was totally alien to him. Mr. Ross: When you were working with Austern, you could have been working on antitrust matters or drug matters or — Mr. Warnke: Both of them. Mr. Ross: Who were the other partners that you worked with? Mr. Warnke: Well principally, Tommy, and Graham Claytor to some extent, who was then sort of a young partner. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: But, principally Tommy. And then when time came to be up for partnership, Gerry Gesell insisted that he had never worked with me, he couldn’t vote for me until he had worked with me. So, I worked with Gerry for awhile, and we became rather good friends, too. Mr. Ross: That would have been a valuable experience. I never worked with him, but I have many friends who have. Mr. Warnke: He was a very, very good trial lawyer. Mr. Ross: Highly intuitive in an interesting time. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Very disciplined. Mr. Warnke: Yes. 24 Mr. Ross: Mr. Burling, Sr., whom I barely met, was at the end of his career. George Rublee, do you remember him? Mr. Warnke: He was not there when I came. Mr. Ross: I see. Mr. Warnke: I met him, and I knew his son or grandson, George Rublee, who was with the firm for awhile. Mr. Ross: And, of course, Dean Acheson, you probably knew. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Well, you’re a young fellow right out of law school. You’re going to a very good law firm, largest firm in Washington at that time, and very competitive, no women significantly — Mr. Warnke: We had one — Eleanor something. Mr. Ross: — and very genteel in a way, all those oriental rug runners, prints of horses and funny looking men with funny looking clothes. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s right. Mr. Ross: This had some feelings for you. What were you thinking about in terms of your career? Where did you want to go? What were your aspirations during those years? Mr. Warnke: I really don’t recall. I came down here, went with that law firm, liked the law firm. I came down with the idea of getting into the government. I’ve always wanted to be in the government, and was very disappointed when the Democrats didn’t win for a long time. And I was even more disappointed when the Democrats did win, and I wasn’t offered 25 anything I wanted. Mr. Ross: We all wanted to be Attorney General — Mr. Warnke: I wanted to be in the Defense Department, and the only thing I was offered was — I’ve forgotten — it was something that was so poor I really had no interest in doing it. Mr. Ross: You were very successful. You became partner. What year was that? I’ve got it right down here, but I’d have to dig it out. Mr. Warnke: 1956. Mr. Ross: And what law did you specialize in? Mr. Warnke: I did antitrust and food and drug. We represented the American Can Company, and American Can Company had a lot of lawsuits at that point, including one in California. I spent a lot of time on that. Mr. Ross: You were a litigator at that point, and most of your litigation was in the antitrust field and food and drug. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Did you think you were a good litigator, a good senior litigator at that point. Mr. Warnke: I thought so. Mr. Ross: I’m trying to stir you up. Mr. Warnke: I enjoyed it. When a person joined Tommy, Tommy didn’t do any litigation. In fact, for some reason he was sort of fearful of it. For one thing Tommy was not extemporaneous. He wrote everything out. Everything. 26 Mr. Ross: Must make it hard for a litigator. Mr. Warnke: Very hard for a litigator. So, litigation I learned principally from Gerry Gesell, who was very, very good. Mr. Ross: And you were a bag carrier, I suppose, for some time. Mr. Warnke: Oh yes, sure. Mr. Ross: I’m almost through this session, not through with Covington, but did you ever have any aspirations towards the judiciary? Mr. Warnke: No, not at all. I never had any desire to be at all. At the end of the Johnson Administration when I was in the Defense Department, I was asked whether I had any interest in going on the Court of Appeals, and I said no. Mr. Ross: Your life might have been different. Mr. Warnke: I never had any desire to be a judge. None. Mr. Ross: Well, we’ve been going almost an hour and a half, and I appreciate this very much. Mr. Warnke: Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate your coming. Mr. Ross: I look forward to the next one. Mr. Warnke: Very good.