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Oral History of Abe Krash
Fourth Interview
November 7, 2013
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of the Historical Society
of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewee is Abe Krash, Esquire, and the interviewer is
Stuart Pierson, Esquire. The interview took place on November 7, 2013. This is the fourth
interview.
Mr. Pierson: Today is November 7, 2013, Abe Krash and I (Stuart Pierson) are here at the
offices of Arnold & Porter. This is the fourth session in our interview. When
we last stopped, we designated this interview to begin with Abe Krash’s life in
the 1970s.
Mr. Krash: Yes, We stopped near the end of the 1960s, and I thought if we could talk
about things in the 1970s, possibly into the 1980s and then perhaps we’ll have
one final concluding session, which should be a short session.
There was one significant matter that occurred at the end of the 1960s that I
neglected to talk about last time which I felt I should discuss and that was my
involvement in a Court of Appeals decision with respect to the Federal
Communications Commission involving the fairness doctrine. What
happened briefly is this. A man by the name of Banzhaf filed a complaint
with the Federal Communications Commission with respect to cigarette
advertising; it was being carried by licensees, that is TV and radio stations.
The FCC had a doctrine called the fairness doctrine which had been
formulated in 1949; in substance it provided that if licensee presented one
side of a controversial issue, it was obliged to present the other side. That
doctrine had never been applied to advertising. In response to this petition by
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Mr. Banzhaf, the FCC issued an order which in substance required all
licensees, that is all television stations and all radio stations who carried
cigarette commercials, to devote a significant amount of time to the position
that cigarette smoking is hazardous to one’s health, that is to the other side.
The cigarette companies and the networks challenged the validity of this rule.
Under the appropriate statutory procedure, that appeal had to be lodged with
the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. My law firm was
retained to represent the cigarette manufacturers. There were separate counsel
representing the various networks. The contentions we made were as follows.
First of all, this was the first occasion where the fairness doctrine had been
applied to advertising. It previously had been applied to political messages,
and we said that the FCC neither had the authority nor was there a precedent
for applying the fairness doctrine to the advertising of a product. Our second
point was based on the Cigarette Labeling Act, which Congress had passed
shortly before this proceeding; It provided in substance that the cigarette
companies had to place a warning label on each cigarette package, but it also
provided that there should be no other regulation with respect to advertising.
We argued that this FCC’s order violated that provision of the Act of
Congress with respect to advertising. Finally we complained about the
procedure. There had never been a hearing or notice from the FCC about this
rule. The FCC just issued this order in response Mr. Banzhaf’s petition.
Mr. Pierson: Who was the Chair of the FCC? Was it Minow?
Mr. Krash: No, Minow left long before. At any rate, I argued this orally before the Court
of Appeals. I presented the position of the cigarette manufacturers and other
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counsel representing the networks presented their argument also. This was a
very unusual type of order by the FCC. The Court of Appeals ruled against us;
it sustained the power of the FCC. The FCC had conceded that it could not
abolish cigarette advertising on radio and television. They could not do that,
consistent with their statutory authority. Also, they had admitted that they
could not require warning notices in broadcast cigarette advertisements. The
Court of Appeals said the FCC rule here was not a regulation of advertising
within the meaning of the Federal Cigarette Labeling Act, and it sustained the
FCC’s power to do this. This decision led to a series of events. The cigarette
manufacturers decided several years later to withdraw all cigarette advertising
from broadcasting. That is on both television and on radio. That was an
extremely dramatic action by them. The problem in a nutshell was that no one
manufacturer wanted to do that unilaterally. If it was to be done, it would have
to be done by the entire industry. But if there was to be an agreement to do
that, that would raise serious questions under the antitrust laws because there
would be an argument that this was a conspiracy, in effect, to boycott the
broadcast licensees with respect to advertising. A party who did that would be
very vulnerable to an antitrust attack. We had to shape this in the way of a
Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which was the idea we were petitioning in effect
the legislative branch to do this, and we persuaded the Justice Department to
acquiesce in this. So this very significant action involving hundreds of
millions of dollars of advertising stopped on television and radio.
Mr. Pierson: Can you explain to the people who are going to read this what the NoerrPennington doctrine is and explain how it works?
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Mr. Krash: The Noerr-Pennington doctrine is a doctrine that joints efforts to solicit
legislative or administrative agency action restricting competition is immune
under the antitrust- law.
As I said this cessation of advertising occurred in the early 1970s. Let me
then just go back a minute and describe what the situation was here at the law
firm at the beginning of the 1970s and what my role was in the law firm. As
of 1970, Arnold & Porter was a firm consisting of about 70 lawyers. We had
grown substantially during the 1960s. Judge Arnold died in the fall of 1969.
Beginning in the decade, meaning the 1970s, the only one of the three
founding partners who was still here was Paul Porter. He died in 1977; he
was eating dinner at the Palm Restaurant, and he choked on a piece of food
and died shortly afterwards. Abe Fortas who had left to take a seat on the
Supreme Court in 1965 did not return to the firm after he resigned from the
Court in 1969. What then happened essentially then was that, given the death
of Judge Arnold and the departure of Abe Fortas, some of the younger
lawyers obviously were moving up in terms of position in the firm. At this
point, beginning around 1970, I was the lawyer in the firm in charge of
several of the firm’s most significant clients. This role was called the
responsible partner. Needless to say, I didn’t do all the work for each of these
clients. I had many people working with me, but I was the responsible partner
for the firm’s representation of Philip Morris. We were the Washington
counsel for Philip Morris, and also I was the responsible counsel for Miller
Beer that they had acquired. I was the counsel in charge of the work of the
firm for Unilever. I was very deeply involved in the firm’s representation of
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Federated Department Stores, which had been a long-standing client with the
firm. They had a number of antitrust problems, which I was responsible for
handling; Bud Vieth was the responsible partner for Federated. In addition, I
had other clients that I was responsible for at this point. In addition, to that, I
was deeply involved in the management of the firm. The firm was managed
by what is called the Policy Committee which is an elected committee, and
beginning in the early 1970s a new generation began to assume the
management responsibilities of the firm. I was elected a member of the
Policy Committee. I remained a member of the Policy Committee until I
retired in the 1990s. I was also a member of the Compensation Committee
which annually determined the compensation of partners. In addition, I was
the partner in charge of the firm’s antitrust practice group. I was very deeply
involved with both the practice and management of the firm which was
expanding and growing at this particular point.
Early in the 1970s, the law firm of White & Case became involved in a
proceeding with the Securities and Exchange Commission. What happened
was that the SEC had decided to challenge actions by lawyers and
accountants as well as companies. This was the first case in which that
happened, I believe. In any event, suit was brought by the SEC against White
& Case and other law transaction closing, there should have been disclosures
made concerning the financial conditions of various parties. This was called
the National Student Marketing case. The White & Case firm, a very
prominent law firm in New York, retained us to represent them in this
proceeding.
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Mr. Pierson: Do they have a Washington Office?
Mr. Krash: They did not at that time. The responsible partner in our firm in charge of this
matter at the time was Milton Freeman, who had been a partner with the firm
going back to the 1940s, shortly after the firm was founded. He was an SEC
specialist, and he asked me to assume responsibility for the litigation, so I was
the litigating partner. We ended up with a large staff of lawyers working with
me. This was a very significant matter for the bar and the SEC, and needless
to say, for White & Case. We had many, many meetings with the partners at
White & Case discussing how to conduct this litigation.
Mr. Pierson: Was there a driving force within the SEC?
Mr. Krash: Yes, Stanley Sporkin was in charge of enforcement, and the SEC was
determined to now challenge lawyers. This litigation was before Judge
Barrington Parker and it went on for four or five years. I was very deeply
involved in it together with a team of lawyers at our firm. I was assisted by
Daniel Rezneck and Robert Winter among others. To make a long story short,
the case ultimately settled; we negotiated a settlement with the SEC. Some of
the other parties went to trial and lost. That proceeding occupied a great deal
of my time for several years. There were lots of depositions and arguments
and many meetings with the SEC. I think it is worth my pointing out at this
point that unlike the situation in 2013, there was much less specialization of
the bar in Washington in the 1970s, so that while I was not an SEC specialist,
that was not my basic area of law, it was possible for lawyers like me to be
asked to take on significant matters outside of our particular specialty. I was
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not a communications lawyer either, but I was asked to argue this significant
fairness doctrine case, which was an important SEC matter, and I was asked to
do this representation of this litigation involving the SEC. If I may just
interject, I think today that would be more difficult. I think clients tend to
want people who are specialists, that is either communications specialist or
SEC specialists. Not necessarily, but there is a tendency for that.
Going forward into the mid-1970s, one day in the fall of 1976, I was in
Chicago on a matter, and I received a call in the middle of a meeting; a person
came into the meeting and said to me that the White House was calling. I was
startled, I didn’t know what this was all about. I left the meeting. The person
on the other end of the phone was a man by the name of Ed Schmults, who
had been a partner in White & Case and who was then a member of the
White House counsel team for President Ford. He said he needed to see me
right away about an urgent matter, and he asked me when I would be
returning to Washington. I remember it was a Friday, and I told him I would
be catching a plane within several hours from O’Hare, returning to
Washington. He then said he would meet me at the airport. I arrived at
Washington National, as far as I can remember, late in the afternoon, flying
from Chicago. Ed Schmults was there in the parking lot outside of the
terminal. He said to me that he had an urgent matter which he wished to
consult with me about. We were sitting in his car, and then he said your client
is the President of the United States. He asked me if I would be immediately
available to meet with President Ford that evening. This was kind of a
command performance and I said of course, I would be able to do that. Within
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an hour or two, I was in the White House in the Oval Office. There is a small
office adjacent to the Oval Office where I met with President Ford. Daniel
Rezneck was a partner assisting me, and I asked him if he would immediately
come with me. Essentially the matter on which I was consulted involved an
issue relating to campaign contributions from a labor union. Charles Ruff,
who later became a prominent lawyer here and the U.S. Attorney was the
independent counsel investigating this matter. I was being asked to advise the
President with respect to the legality of these contributions. I should tell you I
found President Ford extremely intelligent and pleasant. We sat in a small
conference room outside the oval office for about an hour discussing this. I
was asked to take on this representation.
Mr. Pierson: Do you know why you were chosen?
Mr. Krash: I don’t know, I can only speculate. I think it might have been more
understandable for them to have gone to someone who was widely known as a
white collar criminal lawyer, like Edward Bennett Williams, but I think they
did not want to do, this. Why not, is pure speculation on my part. I think they
were concerned if they did that that it might appear to have the coloration of a
criminal matter or a more significant matter than it was. Ed Schmults knew me
by reason of my representation of White & Case where he was a partner, and
I think he had a decisive voice in the selection of counsel. But I don’t really
know why they chose me. Anyway, I handled this matter during the midst of
the campaign of the 1976 presidential campaign. I didn’t see the President
again. I did see his general counsel and Ed Schmults a number of times. We
persuaded Mr. Ruff that there was really wasn’t much substance here. It went
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on for several weeks during the campaign, and he agreed with our presentation
or conclusion that there was no serious problem here and he dropped the
matter. Subsequently, there was a dinner at the White House, and I was
invited, along with my wife, Joan, to dinner at the White House. That’s is the
only occasion in which I ever went to a White House dinner. It was a splendid
occasion and event. They really do it elegantly. Subsequently, I received a
very nice letter from President Ford thanking me for helping him, but I never
saw him again. That was the only occasion, as I say I had any dealings with
him or met him. I had a very favorable impression of him because of the type
of person he was. He was incisive and intelligent, and he was very friendly, of
course.
Also, sometime in the mid-1970s, at or about this time, I got a call from the
Dean of the Yale Law School, Abraham Goldstein. I had previously
mentioned, I think in our first interview, that he had been an associate of
Raoul Berger, and I succeeded him there as an associate. Goldstein left
Berger’s office to clerk for Judge Bazelon on the Court of Appeals. He then
practiced briefly here in Washington in the mid-1950s, and he then went to the
Yale Law School as a professor. By the mid-1970s, at the time when I
received this call from him, he was the Dean of the Yale Law School.
Goldstein was an exceptionally able person and a very fine lawyer. He was a
very distinguished, criminal law scholar. He came to my house to see me. He
said he wanted to invite me to come to Yale to be a visiting lecturer. He
proposed that I offer a seminar at Yale. He asked if I would be interested in
doing that the following year. The idea was that I would fly to New Haven
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and teach once a week. I had been a graduate fellow there. I also knew a
number of the members of the faculty; they were friends. This was a very
appealing idea to me and so I suggested to Goldstein that I could offer a
course which I thought they didn’t have; I thought I might be able to make a
contribution. I said I could offer a course in Complex Litigation. Goldstein
was very enthusiastic about that and said that would be great. To make a long
story short, I then prepared the seminar which I offered the following fall at
Yale Law School. I would fly to New Haven each week. I thought the students
were very gifted. Not all, but many of them, had graduate degrees, and they
were very smart. They were very interested and engaging; it was a small
seminar consisting of about 25 or 30 students as I remember. It was very
pleasant because I would stay for dinner with members of the Yale faculty
who invited me to meet with them. I valued that experience a lot. There were
a number of very interesting people there. I did this for four years, that is with
a break for two years, and then for two more years. It is an experience that I’ve
looked back at with pleasure. I made it a policy that I would never try to
recruit any of these students to my law firm, even though my mouth watered
at the thought of having some of them, but I never did. A few of them later did
show up and did come here, but I was very meticulous about not recruiting
them. I thought that many of them were exceptionally gifted young people.
Mr. Pierson: With respect to the course, as a seminar, did they write papers?
Mr. Krash: They took exams. I took as a theme of the seminars something I had been
taught by Judge Arnold. Arnold had a very striking insight. He said that the
rules of procedure can be thought of as techniques or ways to speed up a case
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or to slow down a case. I had never thought of the rules that way. I wanted to
demonstrate to students various tactics or strategies which were used by
lawyers either to speed up a case or to slow it down and show them what went
on in litigation. I took some of the cases I had worked on, including pleading
arguments and briefs, which they normally were not familiar with. The
students were very interested. A lot of them had in mind, I think, or a hope
that they would become litigators. I was able to contribute something to the
law school, which I don’t think they had at that point. The Yale Law School, I
think, expected that a number of students would enter public service and also
that a number of them would become law school teachers. A considerable
number of the graduates however, went into practice. They were very
welcoming and cordial. I greatly enjoyed that experience at Yale.
Going back to the things I was doing for various clients, I did a lot of work for
Philip Morris. I did not do product liability work for them, which our firm did
later, that is in representing them in tort cases that were brought by people
claiming they had been injured by smoking. My role was primarily dealing
with Washington issues. In the early 1970s, Philip Morris acquired Miller
Beer, which is located in Milwaukee. That was its basic location. It was then a
relatively small beer company. The beer industry was dominated by Anheuser
Busch. The person sent out by Philip Morris to manage Miller Beer was a man
by the name of John Murphy. He was sent from New York to Milwaukee as
the chief executive to run Miller Beer. Murphy was a lawyer whom I had
come to know while doing other work for Philip Morris, and we became very
good friends. He was a very engaging person, and an exceptionally able
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executive. When he arrived in Milwaukee, he immediately got in touch with
me, and he asked me to come out there. He made clear to me that he wanted
me to play an active role in advising him about problems with Miller Beer,
and I did that. One day, sometime in the mid-1970s, he said we have an
opportunity to acquire a product called Light from a brewery in Chicago by
the name of Meister Brau. Light then was an insignificant brand; it was
basically being marketed to women. Murphy had a gleam in his eye that he
could take this brand and transform it. It was a point when the antitrust
authorities were challenging acquisitions, especially in highly concentrated
industries, like the beer industry. Miller Beer was a small firm at this point. It
was a very touchy question whether they could make this acquisition.
Anyway, Murphy went forward with the acquisition. His action transformed
the beer industry. He took this Light Beer, that was essentially being marketed
to women, and he transformed it by marketing it differently. He developed a
slogan: “Tastes Good, Less Filling.” The idea was that you can have a good
tasting beer of low calories that would be an attraction to young men. It
transformed the whole beer industry. It was the beginning of the development
of light beer products. Anheuser Busch now has its own light beer product,
which is a very successful product. In any event, Murphy built up Miller Beer,
which had been a relatively minor factor in the beer industry at that time. As I
said, I was counsel to him in many ways. He frequently called and consulted
with me and invited me to Milwaukee many times. It is a dreadfully cold
place in the winter time. I got to be friends with a number of the executives
and people there and to work closely with them. We had one important case
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for them which was called the Universal Brands case. What happened was
that Miller Beer was appointed as the American distributor for Lowenbrau,
which is a beer made in Germany. Miller wanted to have that product
distributed through the Miller Beer wholesalers. They terminated the
wholesale distribution arrangement of existing wholesalers and transferred the
product to the Miller wholesalers. One of the wholesalers, who was cut off,
Universal, sued Miller in Florida claiming this was a violation of the anti-trust
laws. We won that case. It was clear that a company could change its
distributors. At the same time, I was also deeply involved during this period in
the 1970s in advising Philip Morris, and I have to take a minute to explain
something about what’s going on in the cigarette industry. When we began to
represent Philip Morris, in late fall of 1963 the cigarette industry consisted of
six companies. Philip Morris was the sixth, the smallest with only about 6% of
the market. The three major cigarette companies and brands were R.J.
Reynolds, which was the manufacturer of Camels; American Tobacco, which
was the manufacturer of Lucky Strikes, and Liggett & Meyers which
manufactured Chesterfields. Those three companies between them accounted
for about 75% of the market. Philip Morris in the mid-1960s acquired a
product called Marlboro, which was a filter cigarette, basically marketed at
the time to women. I don’t know who, but some of the Philip Morris
executives had the idea to transform this product by using a cowboy to
advertise it. To make a long story short they built Marlboro into one of the
world’s greatest brands. I read an article recently that described Marlboro as
one of the world’s best known brands. What happened was that Philip Morris
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which was a number six company at the time when I came on board and
started to advise them, kept growing and developing and it came to the point
where it became finally as of today, the leading company in the cigarette
industry.
During this period of which we’re talking about (1970s) they called on me
for many matters. Basically I was their Washington counsel, I was not doing
corporate or product liability work for them. They had separate counsel for
that. There were many serious issues that I was asked to advise them about, I
got to know them very well. They were an exceptionally well-managed
company. They were very cordial, helpful and supportive of lawyers, and
they valued and trusted lawyers.
Mr. Pierson: From starting as an associate, when you are assisting Abe Fortas, and other
senior partners at Arnold, Fortas & Porter, you have now become principal
counselor and trust advisor, regulatory advisor, you know, uncovering the
spectrum.
Mr. Krash: By this point, I was in my mid-forties and in the meantime, Arnold & Porter
was growing and thriving. A lot of these clients obviously required
additional partners and associates. We kept growing. People like Stuart
Land, Dennis Lyons, Bud Vieth and Bill Rogers were making tremendous
contributions to our firm. It was a period of growth for the firm. The period
for me was a time of great opportunity; it was an exciting and interesting
time. It was a good time to be a lawyer in Washington because companies
needed advice with respect to Government regulations, and we were in a
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position to give them that advice.
I represented Lever Brothers until early 1970s and then other lawyers in the
firm took it over. Unilever had two subsidiaries in the United States, Lever
Brothers, whose headquarters are in New York, and Lipton, the tea company.
I did work for Lever Brothers, and also I did a little work for Lipton. I was
also counsel for Unilever, the parent company, whose offices were located in
London and in Holland. I was invited to come on several occasions to
London and to address the Board of Directors about American problems. I
enjoyed that experience. London is a wonderfully interesting city. When I
was going there in the late 1960s, London had begun to recover from the
war, and I got to know some of the senior people at Unilever, which is a
great world company. They have branches all over the world. I was invited
into their inner circle to talk with them about issues relating to the United
States. I did that in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Sometime in the mid-1970s one of the folks in our office asked me if I would
be willing to go to Germany. I had never been to Germany. Our firm had
represented some German clients and so I thought this would be an interesting
thing to do. I went to Frankfurt, and we counseled a German company. That
was my initial trip to Germany. I remember coming there and the executives
we were meeting wanted to take us to lunch after we had flown over night.
There was a Pan American flight to London and then we flew to Frankfurt.
Anyway, we were quite tired because of the overnight flight. They wanted to
take us to lunch and they took us to an eating house, which was beautiful,
going back to World War I, I think. They had marvelous food and German
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wine. They were very gracious to us. Frankfurt still showed signs of bombing
from World War II, when I as there. I have a vivid memory of going to
Germany and talking to these folks about the problems they had in the United
States.
Going back to my work for Philip Morris, in the early 1970s Philip Morris
decided to diversify, and they made three major acquisitions. The first was
Miller Beer. I was not involved in that acquisition, but I subsequently became
deeply engaged in representing Miller. Philip Morris acquired two other
companies that I was involved in. First, they acquired General Foods, which
is a food manufacturing company and I was involved in counseling and
advising about that. Sometime in the 1970s they decided they wanted to get
into the soft drink business and they acquired the 7-Up company, which is
located in St. Louis. 7-up retained us for various matters. We traveled to St.
Louis to meet with them on a number of occasions.
In the mid-1970s, I was retained by a Sperry Rand, which was a computer
manufacturer at that time with offices in Philadelphia. Subsequently they
became Univac. They had some matters that they wanted to consult me
about. I had an opportunity to see what the computer industry was like in its
infancy. I went to Philadelphia and talked to their technical people, and it was
fascinating. I witnessed dramatic transformations in three great industries by
virtue of the relationship I had with different companies. Univac was one,
although they were called Sperry Rand at that time. They developed the main
frame computer. They were the pioneers in developing computers, not IBM.
Sperry thought that what you should do is sell the computer. IBM had the
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great insight that what you should do is to lease it to customers. As it turned
out that was a much more effective method of introducing the computer,
because people didn’t know what the computer was. To make a long story
short, IBM quickly outpaced Sperry Rand, because people weren’t
knowledgeable about computers. Sperry was trying to sell it and IBM was
trying to lease it, and I think customers felt more comfortable leasing it than
buying it. Sperry was an innovator and a pioneer in computers in a very
dramatic way. They were the pioneers but they began to lose out to IBM
which became enormously successful and a dominant company. I witnessed
this transformation of the computer industry at that stage.
The second industry I saw transformed was the detergent industry, where we
were representing Lever Brothers. Beginning in the late 1940s, Abe Fortas
had been retained as Lever’s counsel. At the time we began to work for them,
the detergent industry consisted primarily of Procter Gamble, Lever Brothers
and Colgate. Procter Gamble was somewhat larger and had about 30% of the
market, Lever Brothers had about 25% and Colgate was somewhat behind.
Then promptly after World War II ended, Procter & Gamble introduced in
the market a synthetic detergent, that is a detergent made from a petroleum
derivative as distinguished from one made from fats and oils. It was called
Tide. Within a few years, Tide became overwhelmingly dominant. It was
enormously successful. It was brilliantly marketed. Lever Brothers knew
about this technology, but it was slow in introducing a synthetic detergent.
So the industry was transformed. Procter became by far the dominant firm in
the detergent industry by virtue of their being able to develop this product
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Tide, which is still on the market. It was brilliantly marketed by Procter and
developed by them. Lever subsequently came out with a detergent called
Surf, but it did not compete successfully with Tide.
Mr. Pierson: Surf sounds demeaning to Tide.
Mr. Krash: As I said, Procter then became dominant. I have not represented Lever for
many years, but I understand that they sold their U.S. detergent business a
few years ago. Procter still remains, I believe, a very successful detergent
company.
The third industry where I saw dramatic changes was the cigarette industry.
Philip Morris, at the time we began representing them in 1963, was the sixth
ranking company, but they perceived the future of the filter cigarette. In
particular, they marketed it in a spectacular way. Some of the other
companies, particularly American Brands, did not perceive that the market
was going to be transformed that way. Philip Morris emerged in the end as
the premier company. It is interesting to see how various marketing decisions
profoundly affected what happened to various companies.
Mr. Pierson: Marlboro was purchased by Philip Morris? Was there any indication of
concerns with the medical impact of cigarettes that filters would be more
desirable?
Mr. Krash: You have to remember the Surgeon General’s report came out in 1964
saying that smoking cigarettes is hazardous to your health. So, yes, the filter
cigarette was developed partly in part, in response to the feeling that it
would be a safer, less hazardous cigarette. Some people thought so, I think,
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at the beginning. That was one aspect of it. In the computer industry, Sperry
Rand was technologically more advanced than IBM, but IBM had the great
marketing insight that you should lease it to customers rather than sell it.
Procter & Gamble had the insight that a synthetic detergent made from
petroleum derivatives had various advantages over something that was made
from fats and oils. Again, it was about marketing. I had a grand stand seat
watching what was going on during all these periods of counseling and
advising people about it. Philip Morris, of course, succeeded spectacularly,
whereas Sperry and Lever Brothers were less successful, although there
were very good people at those two companies.
We have talked a lot about what I was doing professionally. I thought maybe
I’d take a few minutes to talk about what is going on with my personal life
during this time. In the mid-1970s, I had two daughters growing up, Jessica
and Carla. Jessica went to Harvard and later to Julliard, and subsequently
got a doctorate degree from the University of Maryland. She is a professor
of music and a composer. She composes and teaches music. She has two
discs of her music that are now out. My other daughter, Carla, is also
artistic. She went to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and
became a clothes and furniture designer. She lives in Philadelphia. Jessica
lives in Washington, DC. Joan and I in the 1960s purchased a home in
Somerset in Chevy Chase. We were fortunate to find a house with a threequarter lot on a dead-end street. In the mid-1970s, we acquired a summer
place in Truro on Cape Cod. It is a beautiful area. The National Seashore
surrounds us so it has retained its beauty. We have a house sitting on a hill
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which overlooks the bay.
Joan and I have also travelled a great deal. We went to England, France,
Italy, and Greece. We went to the back of the Iron Curtain at a later date. We
went to Israel several times, and we also went to the Far East. We went to
Japan, China, Cambodia, Viet Nam. We also went to Alaska and Hawaii and
to the Galapagos. We traveled a lot. We also took a number of trips to the
West to Wyoming and to Colorado. I have no family left in Wyoming, and
very few of my school day friends there are alive. But I still have an affection
for that part of the world. I grew up in Cheyenne; it is not a particularly
pretty place, but Laramie, 40 miles away is quite beautiful, and what’s even
more spectacular and beautiful is the Northwest corner of Wyoming where
Yellowstone is located. Apart from all these things, I would say that I greatly
love classical music, and Joan and I have attended many concerts. On the sad
things in my life was that I never learned to play an instrument. My daughter,
Jessica, plays the piano beautifully, but I never learned to play. I greatly like
the theatre. I love plays. I am greatly interested in art. Joan and I have visited
museums throughout the world. I’m also a film-buff. I like the movies a lot.
Mr. Pierson Any particular kind?
Mr. Krash: Good movies. One of the things that took me a long time to learn was how
to balance my professional life with my and personal life because my work
was very demanding and kept me very busy and deeply engaged. Joan
greatly encouraged me to travel to new places and to expand my horizons.
Beginning in the early 1970’s, Joan enrolled in the graduate psychology
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program at American University. She obtained a Ph.D. degree and had
extensive training in psychotherapy. She became a psychotherapist and
practiced for almost thirty years. She was also deeply involved for many
years with the Washington School of Psychiatry. She served on the Board of
Directors of the schools. That is essentially what was going on in the 1970s.
Mr. Pierson: May I stop you for a minute and ask you about grandchildren?
Mr. Krash: Yes, my daughter, Jessica, was married in the mid-1980s, and she has
three children. She had twins, Zachary, a son, and Rachel, a daughter, who
are now 27. My father was a twin. Zachary went to college at Haverford
College and now is in San Francisco counseling homeless people. Rachel
is a graduate of the University of Chicago College and is now
contemplating going to Graduate School. Francesca, the third daughter, is
presently a sophomore at the University of Chicago. Our other daughter,
Carla, as I said, went to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence
and became a clothes designer. She adopted a daughter named Jinx. She
went to China and adopted her. She turned out to be a pistol. None of my
grandchildren are married, so we do not have any great grandchildren. My
daughter, Jessica, lives nearby in Chevy Chase so we see a good bit of her
and her family.