John M. Dowd Interview 4

68
Oral History of John M. Dowd, Esq
Fourth Interview
July 3, 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 Wednesday, July 3, 2024. This is the
fourth interview.
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
We had just finished with Ted Williams and the Medal of Freedom at the
White House where you took Ted to get the Medal of Freedom from Bush 41.
You talked a little bit before about MLB and George Steinbrenner, but I recall
that you also did some investigations regarding the umpires and Lenny
Dykstra for Major League Baseball.
Yes. Did we talk about Iran Contra?
Not yet. We didn’t get there.
Okay, so Steinbrenner and Dykstra.
Yes. I think you were investigating Dykstra for gambling, wasn’t that right?
Yes. Gambling, but not on baseball. He was in terrible debt. The head of the
baseball union tried to discourage his testimony. I told Lenny that’s fine. It’s
like hitting a light switch. If you decide to take his advice and not testify, then
you won’t play baseball tonight. The Phillies were in town playing the Mets, I
think. I think the guy’s name was Gene Orza.
Then he said he wanted to testify, and the first thing out of his mouth was
thank God the Commissioner caught Pete Rose because it woke everyone up
who gambled. He then proceeded to be quite candid. It was staggering the
amount of debt he was in. Lenny cooperated with us and the Commissioner69
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
put him on probation. Kevin Hallinan, chief of security, supervised that
probation. So that was Lenny.
Did he end up getting any suspension?
He was not suspended because the Commissioner believed that anyone who
told the truth was entitled to some consideration, so he put him on probation
for a year, and he had to report to Kevin. He had to keep his nose clean, et
cetera. I’m just not sure that he ever recovered from all the debt, even after he
left the game. Quite an impressive man physically. He was batting a .346 at
the time, which then declined. You wonder whether the debt became a
distraction. I don’t know. We didn’t investigate that. It was kind of sad to see.
Let’s talk about Iran-Contra and Colonel Bob Dutton. That was in the late
1980s?
Yes. It was before I went to Akin Gump. Bobby Dutton, a retired Air Force
Colonel who worked with General Secord. They ran an informal operation for
the White House involving Iran and the Contra rivals. Jim Sharpe represented
Fawn Hall. I think she worked for Oliver North. Brendan Sullivan represented
Oliver North. The thing we did with Dutton, a pretty sharp guy, we put
together a chronology of this, and it became sort of the centerpiece for the
defense in making decisions. There was a special counsel in the case. We
didn’t cooperate initially because I wanted to put our act together, but the big
deal was the joint congressional investigation and they had counsel, a wellknown lawyer from New York. It was kind of unusual not to have a
Washington lawyer. In any event, I went to see him and told him Dutton was70
not going to say a word without immunity. He threw a big tantrum on that
one. He was counsel to the joint committee. I don’t think he was very
effective. I didn’t understand the joint committee. It was a big deal. By that
time, he got immunity. We finally came to an understanding and Dutton got
immunity. The special counsel found out how valuable Bobby was. In any
event, there was a big public hearing. We sat up there with Sullivan and North
and Bobby testified. Bob’s recollection of events was really quite powerful.
His testimony went well. Did the same thing to special counsel, so he was
never penalized. They found that he did tell the truth and was a very effective
witness. It was a spectacular hearing. It was enormous.
Dutton was questioned by Senate counsel and House counsel. I can’t
remember House counsel’s name, but he had been around for a while so knew
how to handle these things. So that was that.
They chased Secord pretty good. Eventually he was prosecuted. They also
went after Ollie North. Brendan, I thought was quite effective for North
during the hearings.
MR. TOBIN: That’s when Brendan Sullivan had the famous potted plant line, isn’t it?
MR. DOWD: Yes. He made some famous comment about a tree or bush or something.
MR. TOBIN: Right. He said I’m not just a potted plant.
MR. DOWD: He received thousands of potted plants from all over the country.
MR. TOBIN: Let’s talk about Keating Five for a moment. That was about the same time,
wasn’t it?71
MR. DOWD: That was a little later. Around 1989 or 1990. I was first hired by Dennis
DeConcini. I was recommended by Plato Cacheris. DeConcini wanted
essentially to be his own lawyer, and I told him I just could not be part of that
arrangement, so he got someone else and advised himself.
And then I was hired by John McCain, and that became a long-lasting
relationship. McCain’s father-in-law ran the Budweiser dealership in Arizona.
It was the largest in the country. He was Cindy McCain’s father. He paid my
fees. A former B-17 pilot. A magnificent guy. I got to know everybody very
well. We put together McCain’s case. He was the only Republican charged by
the Ethics Committee. Bob Bennett was hired by the committee, and the
hearing lasted 90-some odd days under the lights. It was really spectacular. It
was started by the dean of the Harvard Law School who was special counsel
in Watergate. The Committee did it based on a New York Times article, so we
challenged all of that and took them on. There’s no question from the facts
that John had communicated with regulators, but that was part of his duties,
and he was a good witness.
We were very active in defending the case. Bob Bennett, as I say, was
special counsel and it’s clear that he was working for George Mitchell who
put together the committee. Every day it was on television. McCain’s staff
was very aware of that so his whole approach had been to talk publicly about
what he had done and what he had seen. He pretty much handled that
correctly. It was an amazing experience. Terry Lynam and Lou Mejia helped
out. Behind us every day, with a broken leg was Roberta McCain, John’s72
mother. Roberta had broken her leg dancing at the Marine Corps ball. Every
senator who came into the hearing room would visit with Roberta McCain, so
she was quite a feature.
John was a very easy client. He had a great chief of staff , Chris Koch,
who had done a lot of homework and helped us out. So, we put on our case
and gave the committee a pretty hard time.
What was interesting, Dave, was that two weeks into the hearing the
Washington Post had written a huge article about the hearing stating this
hearing was being watched by millions of Americans on public television and
CNN at that time, and the committee never realized it. Once the Post article
ran on that Sunday, the senators all showed up at the hearing on Monday
morning. It became a huge public event with a lot of TV cameras. I used to
have to wear a hat because the heat from the lights used to singe my skin.
The other feature of those hearings was that the lawyers representing the
Democrats were not so nice to Bob Bennett. I mean I frankly think McCain
did not belong in the hearing and Bennett knew that. He was only present
because he was a Republican, and Bob took umbrage at that.
MR. TOBIN: What was the decision with respect to McCain and the others?
MR. DOWD: They got scolded and sanctioned and essentially told that they should not have
talked to the regulators. I thought it was a big nothing. John was a good
witness, and he was a good client. He did everything I asked him to do and not
do, so it was a pleasant representation. Being in the company of the
Democrats who had engaged in some mischief was quite an experience. That73
show went on for some time. I can’t remember the number of weeks we were
in hearings, but it was a long time. But it came out alright for John. He got
reelected. He had this pretty good style of sort of stepping up and being
candid about his own facts. I’m trying to think of the guy, a big Arizona
banker who got involved in the Symington case, a savings and loan guy. He
was a pretty aggressive fella.
MR. TOBIN: Was it Keating?
MR. DOWD: Yes. Charlie Keating. There were some issues with Charlie Keating when
John had been in the House as a congressman about trips to Bahamas, and the
chairman of the committee raised that even though it wasn’t raised by the
charter of the committee. We took that on pretty strong. Keating had been
reimbursed, but they kind of tried to blame Cindy McCain for that and that
was quite unfair.
Keating was no shrinking violet when it came to pushing bureaucrats and
regulators around. John had received a lot of campaign money from him, but
again he was quite open about it and that took the sting out of it. It was an
amazing experience for all of us. John came out alright.
DeConcini did not do well, and even during the hearing threatened us that
he was going to go after McCain, and I knew exactly what he was talking
about, and I told him to bring it on. It all backfired when I put DeConcini on
the stand and cross-examined him. It was fascinating, but it was clearly
Democrats versus Republicans.74
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
Howell Heflin of Alabama was the chairman, the former Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of Alabama. Bennett became quite a feature, but he didn’t
like the pushback. He didn’t like the criticism on the merits. But John came
out alright. They admonished him about dealing with regulators. .
Around the same time period, you were hired by Texas Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison, weren’t you, in connection with a grand jury investigation?
Yes. She was a friend of McCain’s. That also led to the Symington case,
which you’re familiar with, and we’ll get to that in a minute.
The district attorney in Austin, Texas was Ronnie Earle, a very powerful
guy, and he was going after Hutchison for something that I thought was rather
petty. But in any event, he convened a grand jury and made a lot of noise
about it and the question was whether Senator Hutchison would appear and
testify. So, she engaged me to help her with that. The odd thing was that her
fellow senators, fellow Republicans, who unfortunately I can’t remember their
names right now, were schooling her every night on how to answer questions
without answering them. It was the most dangerous thing I think I’d ever seen.
I met with her, and we went over what the facts were. Earle, by my reading
and by talking to people in Texas who I knew, was a very dangerous guy, so
my advice was to appear but take the privilege. She had been advised by her
famous colleagues that you can’t do that as a public official. I thought that was
nonsense, and I thought there was a way to do it. I let the lead reporters down
there in Austin know that that was my advice. I leaked it deliberately to take75
MR. TOBIN:
MR. DOWD:
the sting out for her but that she would appear. The morning came, and the
press gathering was enormous.
Kay Hutchison was a very able person, a terrific client. She took my
advice. She went into the grand jury, but there was a waiting room outside the
grand jury that nobody could see or know who was in there. It was like being
in the grand jury itself. So, she went in the grand jury and asserted her
privilege much to the chagrin of the DA, and then she came out. She waited in
the waiting room for an hour, thus leaving the impression to the press
gathering outside that she had testified when she actually hadn’t. She came out
and we all said, “no comment, it was a secret proceeding,” and went on down
the road. Well, the press bought it hook, line, and sinker, so she survived that
media event, and that was it. That was my job, and she was
appreciative.
Afterwards, long after my representation, Earle indicted her, and she got a
good lawyer from Texas, one of the great trial lawyers down there, and went
to trial. The judge threw the case out. The whole thing was nonsense, but you
don’t want to get into the perjury trap. So that’s Kay Hutchison.
From Kay Hutchinson, I think is that when Felton Baker and Houston
Helicopter hired us.?
Felton Baker was an old cattle rancher outside of Houston, Texas, where he
built with his own resources a helicopter operation. My recollection is 20-plus
helicopters that serviced the oil rigs in the Gulf and then during the
summertime went north to put out forest fires. I had wonderful associates
named David Tobin and Lisa Odle. That was the team. The FAA was chasing76
Felton for some paper violations on the 23 helicopters. They grounded them
all because they said they hadn’t kept up maintenance, and it turns out it was
all just record keeping.
The FAA had some kind of crazy informant, a lawyer, who had
orchestrated his own death over in London, and he was their witness. They
wanted to hit Felton hard. At the time we had him, his birds were on the
ground. It was extremely expensive. What we learned was that he ran a good
operation, and he took good care of his customers, who were all in his favor.
They were dying without him on the job, so he was losing a lot of money.
We decided to take on the FAA. We got a hearing, and my colleagues did a
magnificent job. You get an administrative hearing, so we took it, and we
turned it on them. We took discovery. We found out that they didn’t know
what the hell they were doing, and we pushed it hard in discovery taking
people’s depositions, et cetera. Felton was terrific, and he loved Lisa because
she went straight down the paperwork to find out what in fact was going on.
MR. TOBIN: I think Lisa re-created the maintenance records for all 23 choppers somehow. I
don’t know how she did it, but she did it.
MR. DOWD: Yes. And what we found out was this was a big nothing, and it looked like the
FAA’s informant had some kind of grudge against Felton. The informant
didn’t do well on his deposition. We turned the tables and ultimately made a
deal. By that time, I think the paperwork had been squared away.
It would’ve been better if he’d had a computer. I can remember Felton
asking me to visit his customers in Louisiana and Texas. They loved him, they77
loved his service, and his birds were in good shape. It’s just that the amount of
paperwork that these agencies require is stifling. Felton had a rollup desk. He
kept slips everywhere with elastic bands, and God bless Lisa for straightening
it all out.
He was a terrific client. It’s the only time we went to visit a client that we
got picked up by a helicopter. We came off the aircraft, climbed in the
helicopter, and we flew over to do our business. He took very good care of us.
He was a man’s man. I mean you could tell he’d been a rancher. He knew
what he was doing. The best thing for us was he wasn’t going to cave. We
ended up really prosecuting them.
MR. TOBIN: That’s right. We did. We put the FAA on trial in that one.
MR. DOWD: They lifted the grounding. It cost him $2 million or $3 million .
MR. TOBIN: I think that’s probably right. We were down there for six weeks.
MR. DOWD: That was really a terrific experience. I still get cards from his family at
Christmastime. He passed away some time down the road. He was a terrific
man. He built this thing on his own. I mean it wasn’t some big Sikorsky or
some other big giant operation. He did it himself. It was fun flying and having
that experience.
If I remember, the next guy was Mel Powers.
MR. TOBIN: Yes.
MR. DOWD: Melvin Powers was notorious because he was a defendant in the murder of
Candy Mossler, which was a famous murder case in Texas. Mel was
represented by Percy Foreman. Mel was a builder, and he also used to race78
boats. And he had a tax case. Once again, he went everywhere in a helicopter,
and so once again, I was getting picked up in a helicopter and delivered to the
top of this building that he was constructing in Houston. The place was like
Hooters, women all over the place, and he was kind of a stud. But once again,
he was a good client.
The IRS in our opinion did not have a very good case. Mel was a pleasure
to represent. His stories on the Candy Mossler case were just legendary, and
Percy Foreman’s defense of him. Mel was acquitted. Quite an experience. We
ended up making a deal, and I had some help from a tax attorney. I can’t
remember exactly why he hired me, but we did alright.
He was just amazing. I mean he would get in these boat races up north on
these big lakes and he was always cracking up. He was always in the hospital.
It was like representing a race car driver. But he was a good guy, and he was
not difficult to represent, and we did what we could for him.
Now I will say that out of that, Cindy McCain asked us to represent her in
connection with an Arizona US Attorney’s investigation dealing with
prescription drugs.
MR. TOBIN: Yes. I was with you on that, and she was involved with Doctors Without
Borders.
MR. DOWD: Yes. She was a very generous person. I think her father may have passed by
that time. By the way, he was just a remarkable soldier and airman and person,
and as I said, his was the largest Budweiser distributorship in the country.
Everybody drinks Bud out there in Arizona. She inherited that. In any event,79
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MR. DOWD:
she had a terrific back problem, and I won’t go any further than that, but she
had some operations that did not work so well and was taking painkillers. The
United States Attorney for Arizona, a very nice lady, handled the case and
Terry Lynam, my partner, and I went to see her. Cindy had cooperated with
the DA, had really been terrific, and we got that solved. She continued to do
her very charitable work for the people from Bangladesh and the children,
etcetera. She’s amazing. It was a great privilege to represent Cindy.
Let’s talk about your representation of Governor Fife Symington of Arizona.
Governor Symington, we had two. Well, the initial assignment was an
investigation by the House committee. I can’t remember whether it was
Judiciary or not. It was a big committee. Dave Tobin and Leslie Turner were
the very senior and able associates and lawyers on that case, and once again,
the committee couldn’t find its way, and we put together a submission with
the help of Symington, a terrific client, very cooperative.
It all revolved around a savings and loan. It was Southwestern Savings and
Loan. He was on the board, and for some reason the committee and
bureaucrats in Denver didn’t think that a member of the board should be
hustling business when in fact, that’s their responsibility.
Once again, our ignorant government was out of control, leaking like hell.
Fife had run for governor. This was essentially a Barry Goldwater state, but
there were a lot of Democrats out there, and Senator DeConcini was very
powerful. So, they were all over him, but he was doing a good job. We
defended him, and went to a hearing before the House committee, and put on80
our case. It was odd because we sort of demonstrated that there was nothing
there and that he had handled himself correctly. But what we didn’t know was
that the FBI had had just gone crazy and gotten all over the same materials, et
cetera, and they were wide open. So, he retained us to defend him on that. I
had David, Leslie, and Terry. That was a lot of documents and financial
statements. Before he was governor, Fife was one of the best developers,
particularly of buildings in downtown Phoenix and elsewhere. One of the best
things going for us was everything he did was high quality.
MR. TOBIN: He built the Camelback Esplanade as I recall.
MR. DOWD: That’s right. There was a whole development of businesses around there. He
had Coopers & Lybrand as his accountant. Some of those partners went south
on him, but you know he never made any bones. I mean none of his financial
statements were certified.
It was interesting. At the same time I represented some other builders
locally in Washington and they used to do what he did, and that is, you know,
the bank just wants to get some sense of how strong you are, and so you fill
the statements out yourself, and he did, and there was no claim. But the
government treated it as if it were like a formal financial statement. They were
going after Fife for false financial statements to lending institutions in
connection with these developments. It didn’t make any difference that he had
the resources. It didn’t make any difference that he built the buildings on time
and under budget. The government just wanted to get him. It was part of a
campaign.81
He was a terrific client. He came from a very wealthy background, which
was very helpful to us in handling this thing. We had terrific legal assistance. I
would say a couple of million documents were involved, and it went on and
on and on, the investigation, I think almost six or seven years.
MR. TOBIN: That’s right because it started maybe 1990 or so.
MR. DOWD: The US attorney gave the case away to the US attorney in Los Angeles and a
zealous prosecutor, and of course they were leaking themselves to death with
the Arizona press. They just loved to roast Symington.
MR. TOBIN: The Arizona Republic.
MR. DOWD: Fife was so successful. I’ll tell you how successful he was. When he became
governor of Arizona, and this is where politics plays a real significant role,
Phoenix was the murder capital of the world. The state police put together a
program where the police — and Governor Symington joined them — would
spend a few days and overnight in the areas of Phoenix that were badly hit.
They were out doing a watch, patrolling the streets, et cetera, and the murder
rate went to zero. Fife participated in that. Now he is a real aristocrat in
American terms. He came from his own family fortune and then the Frick
Foundation, which he had married into, and he was a Harvard graduate.
MR. TOBIN: Didn’t he save Bill Clinton’s life? He was his roommate, or something wasn’t
he?
MR. DOWD: Yes. President Clinton was in office, and we learned that in the years before
when they were in college, off the coast of Connecticut, Clinton got caught in
a squall and couldn’t swim. Fife swam out and rescued him and saved his life.82
Once we went to an Orioles game. Fife had never been to a baseball game in
his life. It was Cal Ripken night, and President Clinton came, and we were
invited over to meet him. Clinton told me that Fife saved his life. They’re at
opposite ends of the political pole. Clinton never forgot.
So, we prepared the case. The LA boys told the press the case was like
shooting fish in a barrel. We were lying in wait for them. We had something to
say. The trial lasted from the first week in May until the end of June or early
July. The jury went out, and they were out until mid-September. People had to
go back to school. They essentially acquitted him on 17 of the 23 counts. .
One of the jurors, there was an elderly lady from Chicago who had been a
court clerk, after eight days just said I’ve had enough. She wanted to acquit
him. The judge removed her from the jury and put a new alternate on. We
claimed he should have declared a mistrial on the merits. He rejected that. He
was a very good judge. He was the father of the electronic courtroom.
That’s the other unusual thing. Everything we were doing was real time
translation of the record, so we had the testimony on our computers and all the
computers in the courtroom in real time. And then the court reporter would
clean it up. So, every juror who sat there saw the testimony come across the
screen et cetera. But it was a trial that just wouldn’t end.
We had some fun. The extortion count was my favorite. They called some
union rep on it. They charged the governor with extortion under 18 U.S.C.
1951, a 20-year felony and they put this guy on, and little did they know that
we had investigated him. He lived in Northern California, and he used to brag83
every day about how he was going to put the governor away. He told his car
dealer. He told his barber. He told other people. We got all that, and when I
confronted him with it, he hyperventilated in the courtroom. I told the clerk to
get a bag into which he could breathe. He just came apart on the stand.
Fast forward, one of the jurors told me afterwards that as soon as they hit
the door in the jury room and before they had selected a leader, someone
yelled “anybody have a problem with count 13. They all yelled “not guilty.” It
was the highlight of the trial.
Then Fife testified, and we had really put him through his paces, and he
did a terrific job. We took him through his financial statements, and you know
they were mistaken but he otherwise, everything he owned, he had no secrets
from the bank. It turns out the bank files that we recovered contained
everything. There was no mystery about his financial situation and the fact is
his net worth was irrelevant. It was whether he could build the building on
time and under budget. That’s what the banks looked at to make the loans,
which they freely admitted. So that was a big deal.
Then they crossed-examined him. I told him if they don’t take you down
in an hour, you just hang in there. They crossed him for about a week. He did
a great job.
We learned later that the jury really liked him. There was no one who was
more polite in handling people than Fife, and they noticed it in the courtroom.
We had a little course for him called winning the courthouse and so from day
one, it was a long arduous trial.84
I left home, and the last time I saw Carole was in early May and I got
home in the middle of September to my law practice and everything else. We
had a hell of a team. We were living there. Diane Smith, my secretary, Terry
Lynam, Lou Mejia, and we had a wonderful young lady back in Washington,
Amy Overton. She would do our work at night. IT was a big deal, and was
very expensive. We came out essentially convicted of six counts. We took an
appeal and Terry, who is one of the most gifted oral advocates I’ve ever
encountered, and who handled the motions during the trial, made the
argument before the most liberal panel on the Ninth Circuit. Here we had the
most conservative governor, and they treated him so well, but they were all
over this juror who had been taken off and they reversed his conviction.
Retrial was then up to the US attorney in Los Angeles. So, we were waiting on
that.
It was getting toward the end of the year, and I got a call from the lady
who ran the Oval Office for President Clinton. I can’t remember her name, a
wonderful lady, and she said Mr. Dowd, the president would entertain a
pardon for Governor Symington. He knows the governor very well. He’s
followed your trial. He’s got copies of every paper you filed, and she said I
need it by Friday afternoon. This was like Tuesday. So, we jumped on it and
put it together and delivered the application to the north gate on Friday. Then
on inauguration day we sort of held our breath. Jeff King, who was on the
case, another wonderful associate who later became partner, was up in New85
York and he heard that the Washington Post had picked up that Fife was on the
list to be pardoned.
Interestingly enough, the United States Attorney — who’s now the
Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Mayorkas — was the US attorney, and we
had had meetings with him. Terry was able to show that the auditors from
Coopers who appeared on the stand had lied. We had challenged through a
separate accounting procedure their work through the accounting board of
Arizona, and we won. They were severely reprimanded, and he had followed
that. We had given it to him, so he called me when the pardon came in. I had
not run it by the Department of Justice but that was only because the President
wanted it that way, which he’s entitled to do. We also wrote it fairly. In other
words, we figured that Mayorkas would see it someday, and we didn’t want
him to feel like we had sort of taken advantage so by that time he had gotten a
copy, and he said he thought it justified the declination so he was in support of
the pardon.
So that was Fife Symington. I’m happy to say that he still calls me every
two weeks. It was terrific. We were at trial, and Carole and Dan showed up in
the courtroom, and Dan is sitting way at the back. He’s our youngest, now a
retired Marine colonel, and he looked at me and said, “you know dad, I’d
rather sit back here than where you’re sitting.”