John M. Dowd Interview 3

42
Oral History of John M. Dowd, Esq.
Third Interview
June 28, 2024
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is David Tobin, and the
interviewee is John M. Dowd. The interview took place by Zoom on June 28, 2024. This is the
third interview.
MR. TOBIN: We finished our last session with your farewell party from the DOJ Organized
Crime Strike Force. Then you had at that point, which was I believe
September of 1978, you had a bunch of mouths to feed so you went into
private practice. Tell us about that.
MR. DOWD: Whitman & Ransom was a very large New York firm. I think they’ve since
merged with somebody else, but in their day, they represented all the oil
companies and the railroads. I joined them in their Washington office, which
was very small. They had two former Connecticut congressmen who I think
they had known. Both Whitman and Ransom went to Yale and lived in
Connecticut, so that was the connection. I practiced there. I had some
interesting cases while I was there.
I don’t know the order of them, but Whitman & Ransom represented
Sanyo Electric Corporation. They had an enormous U.S. customs case. Sanyo
had an office in New Jersey, just outside the airport. I used to have to go up
there and meet with them. I also went to Japan to deal with it. The Customs
officials we dealt with were in Los Angeles. So right off the bat, I’m doing a
lot of traveling and dealing with that case. It was fascinating to do all that
travelling and deal with Customs. It turned out that for two or three years we
worked on it, and we were able to solve it without any charges. But it was,43
MR. TOBIN:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
once again, like a lot of these foreign companies, Customs had to learn how
they did business and how they labeled things and how they operated. The
assignment ended up being an enormous education process, which was a very
interesting experience for me because as we proceeded in our criminal
practice, I found out that most of the time, the government really didn’t
understand how these businesses worked. We eventually resolved it, but it was
a terrific experience. It was a great result. They’re a huge electronics
company.
They still are.
You also handled the Kidwell trial while you were at Whitman and Ransom,
right?
Yes, It was in November 1982 that Diane E. Kidwell, wife of a Warrenton
insurance broker, allegedly shot and killed Rance Spellman, Patricia
Saltonstall’s farm manager, in what the Washington Post that year would label
a “bitter hunt country land dispute.”
A Rappahannock County, Virginia Circuit Court grand jury indicted
Kidwell on murder and firearms charges surrounding a shooting that took
place on Saltonstall’s Points of View Farm. Kidwell stood accused of
murdering Spellman “with a single shotgun blast from the window of her
pickup truck as Spellman was bulldozing a hotly disputed right-of-way
between the two properties in the early morning of Nov. 9,” the newspaper
reported.44
The Rappahannock prosecutor in the case, Douglas Baumgardner, charged
Kidwell with second-degree murder, and an additional charge of using a
firearm in the commission of a felony.
Coincidentally, Kidwell had been a key witness in the investigation and
criminal trial of Congressman Daniel Flood (D-PA) led by Strike Force 18.
Kidwell worked as an assistant to Dr. Murdock Head, who owned and ran the
Airlie Foundation in Airlie, Va. Airlie had received funds from the State
Department arranged by Rep. Otto Passman (D- La). Kidwell, at Head’s
direction, paid Flood’s aide Steve Elko $49,000 in cash for Flood and
Passman by placing it in magazines from Head’s office given to Elko. Both
Flood and Elko pled guilty to accepting bribes.
Kidwell subsequently hired me as her defense attorney. I eventually
argued that Kidwell was acting in self-defense at the time of the farm
foreman’s death.
Spellman was reportedly shot one day before a Rappahannock Circuit
Court hearing was to have been held at Kidwell’s request for a temporary
injunction, alleging that he had erected a gate across an existing right-of-way
benefiting Kidwell’s land.
Just before Spellman was shot, the Kidwell’s telephoned the Virginia State
Police to report that Spellman, driving a bulldozer, was approaching them
along the right-of-way. Kidwell reportedly blocked Spellman with her pickup
truck.45
Kidwell was first tried on the charges in 1982, but a mistrial was declared
after the jury could not agree on whether Spellman was killed in self-defense.
That jury hung 11-1 to acquit Kidwell.
In the second trial in October 1983, I successfully argued that Kidwell
fired the gun in response to a natural instinct to protect her life, limb, and
property. “The most powerful instinct is to survive,” I said in my closing
arguments. “The second most powerful is to protect.”
I furthermore described Spellman as “that dangerous, unpredictable man
on that bulldozer,” a person who Kidwell feared was reaching for a gun at the
moment she pulled the trigger. Virginia State Police did reportedly recover a
loaded pistol from Spellman’s shoulder holster when examining his lifeless
body, and a shotgun had been stored behind the bulldozer’s seat.
After eight hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Kidwell of both the
murder and firearms charges.
MR. TOBIN: Did you handle any other interesting cases while at Whitman?
MR. DOWD: Another case, oddly enough, was representing F.A.G. Bearings, that’s Fischer
A.G. in West Germany. That’s an incredible family, the Fischer family. They
were the second largest maker of ball and roller bearings in the world, and
they had a very sizable supply business in Connecticut. I used to go up to
Stamford. The general counsel of it was Michael Frowein, a young guy, who
was very smart. The issue was Customs, in the Toledo trade zone where
F.A.G. had a warehouse, maintained that F.A.G. was mislabeling the bearings
and thus affecting the classification and the price and the duties. Once again,46
this took an enormous amount of investigation by us, including several trips to
Schweinfurt, West Germany.
Now a little bit of history. During World War II, that’s what we bombed.
We bombed all those bearing factories to cripple the machines. The company
was capitalized by some of the greatest Fischer family paintings in Europe.
The family fortune, it’s sort of unusual. Because later on when I resolved the
case with Customs, they went public on the German Stock Exchange. In
representing them, I worked for the general counsel, who turned out to be a
magnificent guy, and Mike Frowein. It was a lot of hard work and research. I
got Customs to open up a little bit with me, and then we educated them and
invited them to West Germany, which is something I’d never done before, and
we even offered to fly them over there. We took them to West Germany and
had a walk-through of the entire operation. They told me later that they
understood, because in the bearing business, the slightest variation in the
bearing changes the marking, so you’ve just got to be extremely careful in
doing it. We showed them how to do that. We had people from Germany come
to the Toledo warehouse.
The big problem we had is the guy running the Customs investigation was
a hard ass. He just couldn’t believe that we were actually shedding some light
that was helpful and so forth. We cooperated, and the volume of documents,
Dave, was staggering. I remember we loaded two 18-wheelers full of
documents. We delivered them to Toledo. They didn’t have enough room, so
they stored them in the basement of the U.S. Courthouse in Toledo. We kept47
up this effort to educate and show them the way. The guy didn’t believe it.
Then he claimed that we weren’t producing everything and had the U.S.
Attorney issue a grand jury subpoena duces tecum, which was fine. We just
got two more truckloads and delivered them up there. I finally got the
Assistant United States Attorney, and I said look, here’s what we’ve done, and
here’s what we’re willing to do, but your assessments are completely wrong.
You’re not understanding the markings. So, we finally got them to understand.
And then Washington Customs got involved because they had it valued in
their books as a $100 million penalty. Now, Dave, in the 1980s, that was a
huge Customs case. I was on the case six or eight years. The Customs guy
said bring it, bring a case. They had no criminal case. I had a civil penalty
case, but they didn’t have that either. Finally, I said I’d like to resolve it. At the
same time, the company decided to go public to pay off the private business. I
think we settled for $100,000 and got rid of it.
MR. TOBIN: You also represented a federal district court judge in Georgia during this time?
MR. DOWD: Yes. One day I received a call from Hale Almond, a lawyer in Macon,
Georgia. He asked me if I would join him in representing B. Avant Edenfield,
who was then a federal judge in the Southern District of Georgia. He was
under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, a
narcotics prosecutor, who was extremely aggressive. They maintained that the
judge and his law firm in Statesboro, Georgia, were the consigliere of this
shrimp boat marijuana operation. The prime defendant was represented by a
prominent lawyer in Washington. I can’t remember his name. This was a48
terrific experience. I went down and met the judge and checked him out, The
Zuckerman firm and other people knew him in drug cases they had handled,
and he was a long-ball hitter. He wasn’t acting like anyone owned him. And
then he had a reputation for integrity and probity like I had never seen. He
came off a dirt farm in Statesboro and worked his way up in a law practice as
a litigator. He tried cases all over Georgia, state and federal. He represented
some major corporations and did some major litigation. Every kind. These
country lawyers handled everything. I visited with him, and I couldn’t
persuade this prosecutor to give me a hint as to what he was doing, so we
worked inside the law firm.
The Judge’s brother was a partner. We put together what we could, but I
got to the point where they were sort of winding down the grand jury, and
there was a lot of noise about it. I got a call from the Chief Judge of the
Eleventh Circuit who said they were worried about what they were reading
and that they would like me to bring the judge in for an interview. I told the
chief judge that wasn’t going to happen until I finished doing what I was
doing. I finally did get from the AUSA the parameters of what they were
looking at. I was satisfied that nothing had ever happened with the judge in
the law firm. His partner did represent the shrimper but in a real estate
transaction. There was no funny money or anything like that. Everything
looked good on the books.
I told the judge, I said look, there’s only one way we can do this. I said I
wanted to know where he was and what he’d been doing for the last three49
years. I wanted to build a chronology. I showed him what one of my
chronologies looked like. We got four court reporters, and we got every
document, every gas slip, everything that could show up around him and his
wife in that business, the law firm, et cetera, and we sat in his wonderful
house in the country with a lake out front. We used to go swimming. There
was a court reporter in each room and we were dictating whatever happened,
and then we’d have the judge come in and talk about whatever event it was. It
turned out that the chronologies were a godsend. When we got through, we
knew more than the government knew about the judge and we knew where he
was.
I spoke to the prosecutor, and he said, “Well, what if the judge got invited
to the grand jury?” I said well — you know, I just had a feeling about this guy
– I said, “I may let you talk to him, but you’ve got to tell me a couple of
things that are really bothering me.” He gave me some dates of some alleged
meetings, et cetera, where money allegedly passed, et cetera. Well, guess
what? I had the judge ninety miles away trying a civil rights case. That
happened with every date he gave me.
So, we had the judge prepared. It took about a week. He was a
tremendous client. He was not sitting while we were going through this. He
had stepped aside. We didn’t have to ask him. I told him, “Let the circuit judge
get pissed at me.” I said, “You’ve got to relax, we’ll get there, and when we
get there, I’ll share it with you.” But I told him what we were doing. So sure
enough, the judge went in the grand jury and was in there four hours. When he50
came out, he grabbed my arm. He’s a very modest guy. He said “I think I
educated the boys.” Then the court reporter debriefed us on everything.
Then I got a call from David Margolis, Chief of the Organized Crime and
Racketeering section. The AUSA was invoking the RICO statute over which
Margolis had exclusive jurisdiction. I told Dave the AUSA is crazy. Can you
be the guy who calls the shots, and he said sure. I got a call, and he said,
“Look, John, this is what we’re worried about.” I said, “Look, I want to do a
submission, and I’m going to share with you the notes that I made” And I did.
Dave called me a week later and said, “John, there is no case here. This is
absurd.” So, they told the AUSA, and he appealed it to the Deputy A.G. That
was Judge Tyler. His associate deputy was Rudy Giuliani. Then, we briefed
the head of the Criminal Division. Giuliani called the prosecutor in, put him in
a conference room, gave him a pad and a pen, and he said, “You write down
the evidence that implicates this judge,” and he said don’t come out until
you’re done.
I didn’t find out until later, but Rudy told me he went in there at 5:00, the
pen was there, the paper was there, there was nothing on the paper. Then they
disciplined the guy. He had made a lot of noise. He had leaked to the papers,
et cetera, and then they formally declined prosecution. The Judge was thrilled.
Then I found out the judge’s sister is dying of cancer at the same time. This
just tore the family asunder.
I did have the pleasure of calling the Chief Judge of the Eleventh Circuit,
and I referred him to the Associate AG, Criminal Division, and to Giuliani. If51
he’d been indicted, he would have been the third federal judge charged in the
history of the United States.
We learned when we represented the judge, he was a very proud Georgian,
and Sam Nunn had appointed him. Every Christmas, we got a case of Vidalia
onions from the Edenfields. You’ve probably had some. Certified Vidalia
onions, which they’re very proud of down there. His wife, Melvis, is still a
dear friend. He’s passed. We get a little something at Christmas, a phone call
and so forth. You think about the people you represent. This guy was so
painfully honest, it was incredible. I was very proud of the Department. I think
they gave that prosecutor his walking papers. That was a terrific case.
MR. TOBIN: Tell me about your antitrust work.
MR. DOWD: Back in the early 1980’s, the Antitrust Division was going nuts. They were
bringing criminal antitrust cases. And I got several of them.
Fischback and Moore was one. That involved a job at Philip Morris in
Richmond, and I represented Fischback and Moore in the District of
Maryland. It was a criminal antitrust case. The building project was at Philip
Morris, and they claimed bid rigging. We tried the case before a wonderful
judge in the District of Maryland. I can’t remember his name. He was a
terrific judge. That’s when I sort of discovered, you remember the Antitrust
Division guys and Criminal, these guys liked to make deals. They’re not
worried about whether these guys can try a case. Let’s put it this way. They
were awful. We had a nice team of lawyers, and we beat them.52
After the jury went out, we all went to a saloon down the street to get a
sandwich. We were sitting there having a sandwich and the Challenger blew
up and went down. Oh my God. We were knocked over. The big question for
the judge was whether we tell the jury. The jury was out. They were worried
that some juror may have called home or something. We decided not to say
anything and see if they asked. They didn’t. So, we got their verdict, which
was not guilty. After the jury rendered its verdict, it was an acquittal across the
board. This was a five- or six-week trial. That’s another thing. I was sick as a
dog during the trial. So that was my first bid-rigging trial.
Then the next one, there’s a road builder in Virginia. I can’t remember the
name, and I can’t find the name, but they had a bid-rigging case, and we
worked it out.
The other case I tried was in Oklahoma City. I represented Dan
Kavanaugh, who I became great friends with. He was the biggest road builder
in Oklahoma. His dad had started the company. I have a picture of him
upstairs. He was a tremendous guy, and his wife. I tried it with an old famous
defense lawyer in Oklahoma City. I really ended up doing most of the work,
but he knew his way around the courtroom. We had a hell of a case, and we
put Dan on. It involved bid rigging on big highway contracts. In fact, the head
of the trial unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office was prosecuting him. He told the
U.S. Attorney that Kavanaugh was going to walk. When the jury went out, he
thought he was going to walk. Well, they convicted him. We took it up to the
Tenth Circuit and we lost. It was a very close case. What I didn’t know, and I53
learned, is that the federal bench in Oklahoma City is very political. So, I was
warned that Dan was a Democrat, and there was a Republican on the bench,
and standby for anything. Dan was a great citizen of Oklahoma City, a good-
looking guy, a great golfer, people knew him. Our defense was a very serious
defense. I mean we gave them a run for their money, but they convicted him,
and we lost on appeal. But the judge wasn’t too bad. He gave him like
eighteen months in a country club in Texas.
Well, my friend Dan goes to prison, gets out, and dies. Thirty-eight years
old. He was a guest up here. We had him at our house. It was shocking. He
was in terrific shape. A really good-looking guy. I’ll show you the picture
when you’re up here sometime. We became very close friends.
When the jury convicted him, he turned to me and said Johnny, I love you.
You did everything you could. I said skip the fee because I know how bad you
feel.
I wondered why I got so much business in Texas and Oklahoma. Well one
of the biggest cases I had was the Chromalloy American case. Chromalloy
American was the largest repairer of gas turbine engines in the world and kept
an entire fleet of jet aircraft in the air during the Vietnam War. The Defense
Contract Auditing Agency came in and claimed that they were cheating on the
labor charges. It took us eight to ten years. They had a place in San Antonio
too, so I had business there and Oklahoma City. It was that client that I took to
Akin Gump, and Alan Feld comes in and says we have a conflict. We just sued
those bastards.54
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
This was like $1 million or $2 million in revenue every year. I had to let
them go when I joined Akin Gump. I learned so much about gas turbine
engines. In fact, the blades, and vanes that were at issue, they rebuilt them and
recoated them. The coatings on those blades and vanes were ten times better
than the original.
It was another thing like in the bearing case. You go to work and educate
them and show them.
When you went to Heron Burchette in 1984, it was shortly thereafter that the
Pete Rose case came about, right?
Yes. 1984.
How did you come to be retained by Major League Baseball and Bart
Giamatti?
I got a call. February 23,1989. I had just finished a tax case in Atlanta. I can’t
remember which one, but I walked into the house at 10:30 at night and the
phone rang. It was Fay Vincent. Now I knew Fay from my SBA corruption
investigation. His firm, Caplin & Drysdale, had represented Sam Ray
Calabrese, so I knew Fay in that case. And we knew each other from Brewster
on Cape Cod. We obviously told a lot of stories, and he was familiar with
what I had done at the Department. So, he called me, and he said, “John,
we’re down here at the Hay Adams Hotel having a drink. I’m here with Bart
Giamatti.” I had been in trial, so my head was in a fog. I had not seen the
press about Rose being called into New York by the Commissioner. I hadn’t
kept up with baseball at all. I had been down there like four to six weeks.
Anyway, he55
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
said, “I’m here with Bart Giamatti.” He was then the president of the National
League. Fay said, “I’m putting Bart Giamatti on. He wants to talk to you.” On
the phone comes this magnificent gentleman. He examined me for about an
hour about my whole career and everything else. I always say about Bart, he
can ask a question without giving offense unlike anybody I’ve ever met. As I
was talking to him, I started remembering who he was — from Yale, president
of the National League, et cetera. Then he asked me about Rose, and I said I
remember the guy. He said, “Well we have evidence that he has been betting
on baseball and betting on his own team. We need to investigate. Do you have
any conflicts?” I said “no.” He said “Can you be on an airplane tomorrow
morning to Cincinnati? Chief of security will pick you up. They’ve got
witnesses they want to interview, and John, because it’s baseball, the owners
are going to be very concerned, so we’ve got to move it along.” I said no
problem. I said yes. He said, “You’re hired.” It was amazing. I called Terry
Lynam, my partner, and maybe Joe Osborne. I said we’re going to have this
new case. I’ll call you tomorrow. Sure enough, I went to Cincinnati and spent
the next six months there and was assisted by Kevin Hallinan, Chief of
Security at Major League Baseball and Joe Daly, former ASAC in Cincinnati
at the FBI. Kevin had been a detective in NYPD.
They were both employed by Major League Baseball at that point, right?
Yes. Kevin was Chief of Security and a gold shield detective. Talk about a
good law man. And Joe was an ASAC, but he had been previously hired by
Kevin to do other investigations in baseball. That’s why he was there. I went56
out there, and the first person I met was Paul Janszen, the key witness. When I
got there, I called Peter Ueberroth, because he was the Commissioner. Bart
was acting for him. I was just struck by how easy it was. He was just nononsense, let’s get going, John. We’re really glad we have you, and whatever
you need, you call me. He said when you get your invoice, make sure you
send it here and we’ll get it paid right away. I mean he was just a terrific guy.
Then I learned that on March 1 Ueberroth would rotate out, and Bart
would become Commissioner. So, I finally got my ducks in a row. But we
kept Peter briefed even after he left. Being the Commissioner of baseball is
like you’re always a Commissioner of baseball even if you’re not in the office.
By the way, Sports Illustrated was all over it. The New York Times was all
over it. But they were chasing rabbits, and they weren’t in the right place.
They thought they had sources, but Janszen was not talking to them. There
were all kinds of things swirling. As a matter of fact, they used to chase us in
their car to see where we were going. Kevin had to do some fancy driving.
We debriefed Janszen for days and his girlfriend, Danita Marcum, who
knew a lot, and he gave us some records which looked like Pete’s
handwriting, et cetera, clearly betting on the Reds. There it was. It was like
hitting a home run the first day.
Janszen had made a deal, a steroid conviction or something like that, so
he needed our support if he told the truth. He did a good job in getting us
information. So, we took that and then we just went knocking on doors. I told
Pete’s lawyers, and the trouble with Pete’s lawyers, the guy Reuven Katz had57
this partner, a tax lawyer. They were really Pete’s agents. I asked them if they
had a conflict.
I talked to Bart and one of the instructions he gave me was to brief Pete’s
lawyers every week. I said well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll do it until I sensed that
someone’s fooling with the witnesses and the evidence.
I asked Pete’s lawyers to produce a lot of stuff. Under the MLB contract,
Pete was obligated to cooperate with the Commissioner. For a while, I briefed
Pete’s lawyers. But there came a time later when there was some monkey
business, and I shut them down and didn’t brief them every week. But I did
debrief them, in addition to the Commissioner, as we went along. Bart gave
me all of his authority, which ended up being very helpful. He just said,
“John, when anyone acts out, you tell them you’re the Commissioner on this
case as if I was there.” It was just his wisdom. He had never been in a
criminal investigation. He used to call me late at night. He was just
interested, not so much in getting a report as to how I thought about things
and what I was detecting, if you will. He was very easy to deal with. Little
did I know, in the background his wife, a schoolteacher, wanted to know
what the facts were. I eventually told Bart to give her a copy of the report.
So, we did a lot of interviews in the first few weeks. Fay Vincent was the
deputy commissioner. If when I came back to New York he was in a meeting,
I was reporting to Bart. I think he kept Fay informed, and if Fay was there, I
talked to Fay. There was no question who the boss was.58
Bart was a big process guy. We’re going to have due process here. I told
him we were loaded, but I wanted to nail down everybody who touched this
thing, which we did. A few of the witnesses we took sworn testimony if you
will. Not a deposition. We took their testimony because we wanted to lock
them in. We got the bookmakers and all the people there. We got phone
records and got the bank records, et cetera, and started seeing payments to
loan sharks. And then it turns out Paul Janszen had recorded conversations
with Michael Bertolini, who was Pete’s middle guy at running bets. Those
tapes were just dynamite.
Pete was down in spring training in 1989. I wanted to take his fingerprints
and see his handwriting, so we arranged to meet, I think it was Tampa, and it
turns out George Steinbrenner was advising Pete on how to handle this.
In any event, we were down there, and I got a former FBI agent there, a
handwriting expert and a fingerprint guy. We went down there and took his
handwriting sample. Pete cooperated, but he played games with how he wrote.
He didn’t realize it didn’t matter how big or small he wrote. It turns out we got
100% confirmation. Everything we had was in Pete’s handwriting. We had his
fingerprints and his thumbprints on betting slips involving the Reds. We did a
lot of interviews. We did 123 interviews. That was the great thing about
having Joe and Kevin. They knew how to contact people. By the end of
March, we had ‘em. We tried to get Bertolini on paper.59
I told Bart I wanted to interview Pete. He said “Look, do me a favor. Don’t
cross-examine him. I want you to show him everything just as you have.” This
was so that down the line Pete could not claim ignorance.
Sure enough, Pete flew in from LA. We met in the basement of a convent
in Dayton run by some nuns. I think Pete’s criminal lawyer, who was really a
good guy, set it up. We took his testimony there. I showed him everything.
And when I got to the handwriting and the recordings of Bertolini sort of
giving him up, damning admissions, et cetera, he just turned green. He was
trying not to show it. He was a terrible liar. But we got it done, and we got it
down, and it was one of the best things we did on Bart’s idea of not trying to
pin a rose on him but just ask what’s this, what’s that, how did that come
about. I took him through all the witnesses. When Pete left, I don’t know what
he thought. His lawyers had been eating Krispy Kreme donuts that the nuns
had out. They fell asleep during the deposition. Two of them. Krispy Kremes
will do it to you every time.
I told Bart I would write it up, and that’s when we started. The way we
worked was Kevin and Joe would do the write-up of the interviews and would
fax them to Terry and Joe and, I think, Tom Buchanan.
MR. TOBIN: Just for the purpose of the record, you’re talking about Terry Lynam,
Joe Osborne, Kevin Hallinan, and Tom Buchanan.
MR. DOWD: And Kristen White. We talked about a chronology, so we kept a running
chron, and when we got to the phone records in Cincinnati, we were able to
show the calls by Pete out to the middle guy, the middle guy out to the60
bookmaker, and the calls coming back. Fay Vincent’s favorite exhibit is those
phone calls we had on the appendix. When you saw it all lined up, it really
came together. And then we could pick, so I think we picked 1978 as the year.
I was telling Carole last night that this time of year is the only time there’s no
betting other than baseball going on, so that was the test. What did we look
like in June of 1978? See what I’m saying? Because you don’t want to get
confused with other bets he was making. There was a time when he was
betting on hockey, basketball, baseball at the same time. We all started
writing, and I would say by late April, we had a draft, and so then Bart said
okay, let’s set a hearing. I’d like to do it at the end of May. The owners were
pushing him.
I delivered the report and all the files to Bart at the Yale Club in New
York. He spent the weekend at the Yale Club reading it. I called him on
Monday, and everybody’s holding their breath. Like submitting it to an
English teacher, right. He said John, this is magnificent. He said I just have a
question about this semicolon on page, I think it’s 163. I said, “Bart, I’m going
to go to the committee and come back to you.” Bart said, “Oh, you think you
can? “I said “Yeah, we can. We wrote it.”
I gave it to Fay and Terry. Terry is a stickler on punctuation and spelling.
They said tell him we disagree with him. So, I called him and said
“Commissioner, you’ve been overruled by the committee. The semicolon
stays.”61
Then we tried to set up the hearing, and they started playing games. They
sued us in the court of Common Pleas Court in Cincinnati, sued the
Commissioner. That’s where I testified. We removed the case to federal court
in Columbus. A federal judge threw the rest out.
One thing that occurred during that hearing is we published the report. I
put it on the record in the Court of Common Pleas, and they went crazy. Pete’s
lawyers asked to seal it, and we took an appeal from that to the Supreme Court
of Ohio, and the Supreme Court of Ohio said negative. And that’s when the
newspapers in Cincinnati went crazy. Everything was the “Rose Report” in the
newspapers. I tell you what. People were offended that their boy Pete had
done that.
So that was it. And then we’d come to the end, and Reuven Katz sued for
peace. He said they’d like to work it out. This guy’s a legend, et cetera. Bart
said “No, the game is the legend.” But Fay convinced the Commissioner to
engage in something like SEC negotiations to do a workout deal. I was
opposed to it. We had him cold. It was time to throw him out. This was awful.
Fay lived at the Ritz on Central Park South for half a week with Reuven Katz,
and they came up with the ultimate solution to neither admit nor deny,
whatever the hell that means. That was resolved, and then Bart said to me,
“Look, I want to have a press conference on Friday. I want you to write what
you want me to say.” I was sort of knocked over, I said “You’re the English
professor”. He said, “No, I want the public to have your view of the case.” I
sat down and wrote something, which he took and put in his own way. But I
was62
so flattered by that request. And then he died a week later. His heart gave out.
In his family no one had ever lived beyond the age of 52.
So, Fay became Commissioner. But before we ended the Rose case, he
asked me to commence the investigation of George Steinbrenner and the
Yankees, which I did. I think we’re at Akin Gump now.
MR. TOBIN: Well, let’s see. Did you start on Steinbrenner after you came to Akin Gump?
MR. DOWD: I did.
MR. TOBIN: Okay. So, you moved to Akin Gump, which is where I met you first in 1990.
MR. DOWD: That’s right.
MR. TOBIN: What was the investigation of Steinbrenner about?
MR. DOWD: It was once again about a gambling informant and had to do with
Dave Winfield. What had happened was that Steinbrenner had a campaign
going against Winfield. He had just re-signed Winfield to a huge new contract,
and he handled it himself. Murray Chass of The New York Times read the
contract and saw that there was a cost-of-living adjustment, and that George
had doubled the cost-of-living adjustment. Murray Chass wrote a piece about
it making George look like an idiot. But Dave Winfield’s response when he
learned of it was no, that’s not right. We’ll straighten it out. Well, Steinbrenner
went nuts. He went to Roy Cohn. He went to the district attorney in New
York. He maintained Winfield had a relationship with a gambler, which was
wrong. So, I was hired to investigate George because the Commissioner, Fay,
viewed George as just completely off the rails. So, did I. And that lasted a
couple of years, I think until 1991.63
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
In the meantime, you went over to Akin Gump, because you came in just as
you were finishing up Rose.
January 1990.
I think one of the first cases you worked on there involved Ted Williams.
That’s right.
How did you come to represent Ted Williams?
Baseball has what is known as Baseball Assistance Team, and that’s to help
former ball players who had bad luck or were sick or whatever. Joe Garagiola
started it with Bart and Fay. There was a dinner, and Kevin Hallinan was
there. Kevin came over and said one of your heroes wants to meet you. I said
who’s that, and he said it’s Ted Williams. Well, Ted is one of my heroes. So,
we went up to Ted’s room, and I was just overwhelmed because he was my
hero growing up. We got acquainted, and he said I need your help. He had a
memorabilia shop down in Citrus County, Florida, a million, million-and-ahalf dollars’ worth of memorabilia, and the guy that worked for him took it all.
Backed the truck up and emptied the place. He said “I’ve got to get that back.”
So, I said, “Well, let me think about it.” As I did, I’m thinking Florida,
investigators, you’ve got to find all kinds of stuff. I said “Ted, I just think
we’d spend more money than you lost.” He said, “I don’t care.” I said “Well
let me talk with my partners.” I said, “You don’t fit the pro bono program As
much as we love you, I don’t think they would go for that.” He said he’d pay
for everything.64
So, I got back to Washington and ran it around the firm. They couldn’t
believe what I was saying. I called Ted and said, “I’m not going to do it.”
About a week later, I’m in my office on the corner and people are running up
and down the hall. They have things in their hands, etc., and there’s all this
noise. I got off the phone and said to Diane Smith, my assistant, what is going
on, because I could hear noise down at the end of the hall. She said, “Oh
nothing. Ted Williams is signing autographs for all the girls in the firm. John,
he’s coming down here.” So, he walked in and lay down on the couch. He lay
down, took off his shoes, put his feet up, and looked at me and said “I’m not
leaving until you take the case.”
I let him lie there for like three hours. I said this thing was going to cost
easily a million dollars in fees. I mean you talk about travel and everything,
Terry, and Joe Esposito, and we’d have to hire counsel in that neck of the
woods. Three hours go by, and I said “Okay you son of a bitch. But I’m
talking top rates. And when I render an invoice, I want a wire.” He said, “I
knew you’d take it.”
So sure enough, we took it. We hired a wonderful lawyer down there
named Fred Lotterhos. We got into it, and the guy that clipped everything,
Vincent Antonucci, had a lawyer, George Evans. Antonucci had taken
everything. I mean it was $1.2 million in inventory. It turns out he had been
convicted six times all over this country. I said Ted, “Where did you get this
guy?” He said, “Oh my lawyer in New Hampshire recommended him.” I said
“Well the first thing we’re going to do is you’re going to fire the65
New Hampshire lawyer.” I asked if he ever checked this guy out. He said no,
he was really a cool guy, and I said yeah, right. He’s a smooth talker. But he
had been convicted everywhere, of theft and fraud, federal and state. It’s like
geez, he’s Billy the Kid, you know.
So, we got rolling and talked with the sheriff, the court, and the
prosecutor. They opened up a grand jury, but they wanted us to take the lead,
which we did. We got what we could. I just decided to do something crazy.
We got some tip that his lawyer was living in Miami. Maybe he’s there. I hired
Lee Salinas, a retired special agent, IRS, out of San Antonio, Texas, who had
worked on some other cases for me, and he was on his own. I said Lee, have
you ever worked undercover? So, what we did is we gave Lee something like
$5,000 or $10,000 in cash that he could flash around down in Miami. He
spoke Spanish. It was good. He looked the part, too. We gave him the whole
background, et cetera. Lee figured out where the guy Antonucci hung out and
put out the word that he was looking for Ted Williams’ memorabilia.
Sure enough, the guy bit big time, and we played the reluctant “who the
hell are you?” Busted. We had it all recorded. Private wire job. Private
undercover. We didn’t even tell the sheriff what we were doing. The guy said
come on over. He opened up the garage, and all of Ted’s memorabilia, with
the exception of maybe $50,000, was sitting in the garage.
So, we got on a conference call with the sheriff of Citrus County, the
sheriff of Miami, and said we need a search warrant, this is where it is. And
sure enough, they backed that truck up, and they got it all. And we had made66
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
the tape. We delivered it and put it in the custody of the sheriff of Citrus
County who later delivered it to Ted, and Ted identified it all. We did all we
had to do, and they indicted the son of a bitch. By the way, Florida has three
strikes and you’re out. He’s serving life.
You’re kidding.
He had more than three convictions, so he got life. What’s interesting is Ted
had to testify. This is a guy who is not afraid of anybody, can talk to anybody.
He gets on the stand, and he just completely shrunk. He was so nervous. After
testifying, he told me in colorful language, no f-ing way I’ll ever get on the
stand again. He said, “I had no idea.” I said, “You did a good job.”
We recovered everything. He paid us a lot of money. It didn’t get up to a
million. We didn’t hold back, and Fred Lotterhos did a great job. It was
important to connect with the authorities in Citrus County. They really
appreciated it, as did the judge and the sheriff. We stayed there in Ted’s house
and ate a Ted Williams breakfast every morning that he cooked while he was
on the speakerphone talking with his Red Sox buddies and Bobby Knight.
One morning Joe Osborne was pushing his toast and bacon around his plate
and Ted said “What’s the matter, don’t you like it?”
He was actually a very good client. We lived with this guy. We lived with
our hero and learned so much about him. A magnificent guy. Not only a
Marine, but a fisherman, and he was a fighter pilot in the Korean War.
One day I get a call from Fay Vincent, and he said, “The President asked
me to call you. He wants to give the Medal of Freedom to Ted.” I said to Fay67
“Did you call him? You’re the commissioner. You know him.” Fay said “No.
They don’t want to talk to me.” I called Ted and said, “Hey Ted, how are you
doing?” “I’m great, how are you? How’s Carole? How are the children?”
Blah, blah, blah, and then he goes “Alright what do you want.” I said “Ted,
our Commander in Chief has called me, and one Marine to another, he’s asked
me to bring you to the White House to get the Medal of Freedom. We’re
Marines. This is the boss. We click our heels and salute and go over there and
do it.” He said, “I don’t deserve it.” I said “There are people who disagree
with you on that. So why don’t you just let them pat you on the back, you can
tell a bunch of stories.” He said “John, it’s very unfair to use the Marine card
on me.” I said “Well I’m using it because I got to tell you something. He’s my
Commander in Chief and I’m going to deliver you if I have to carry you.”
He was a very good-looking guy. We got him in a nice shirt. He just
looked terrific. We’re in the receiving line at the White House and the first
guy is the President. I’d never met him, but he recognized me and said “John,
who’s the guy in the tie?” The President knew Williams because they go
fishing all the time in Maine. In any event, it was an incredible occasion. And
he got to meet the other honorees and was very impressed. He was very
modest. It was never about him, and that’s the way he is. A terrific experience.
MR. TOBIN: You got me an autographed baseball from Ted. To Dave, from Ted Williams.
It’s a treasured possession.
MR. DOWD: So where are we? Is that enough for today?
MR. TOBIN: Yes. Why don’t we stop here for today.