Thomas C. Green Interview 5

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ORAL HISTORY OF THOMAS C. GREEN
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 Judy Feigin and the interviewee
is Thomas C. Green. The interview is taking place over Zoom on July 23, 2024. Tom is at his
home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Judy is at home in Washington, D.C. This is the
fifth interview. [updated January, 2025]
MS. FEIGIN: Good morning.
MR. GREEN: Good morning.
MS. FEIGIN: When we ended the last session, we had completed your interactions with
Oliver North as to Iran-Contra and we were ready to talk about General
Secord. There was a lot going on with him, beginning I think with his
testimony before the Iran-Contra committee. Could you tell us about your
representation of him during that time?
MR. GREEN: I earlier described [Session 4] how I came to meet General Richard
Secord, who died in October of 2024. He was one remarkable individual.
He came up through the Air Force to the rank of lieutenant general. He
was a well-known fighter pilot in Vietnam and Laos. A gutsy, brave guy
really. And a tough guy, a lot of courage; I admire him on a number of
levels.
Again, as I related earlier, I met him sometime following the Camp
David Accords when the movement of military equipment to Egypt was
investigated by DOJ. Secord survived that investigation but soon after
retired from the Air Force. Thereafter I maintained my relationship with
him and we saw each other from time to time. He went into some other
business deals and this and that and I had continuing contact with him
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mostly of a social nature. And then in 1985 he re-enters my life so to
speak in connection with the Iran-Contra affair.
When Congress began its investigation in 1987 to unravel just
what happened, Secord was subpoenaed to testify. We both knew that
North would invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify as part of
his strategy to obtain immunity. Secord and I had conversations about
whether he should testify. Without descending into my advice to him, he
made the decision that he wanted to testify. In fact he insisted on being the
lead-off witness at the hearings, and he wanted to appear voluntarily. That
decision was compatible with his personality and with his enormous
confidence. He believed at the time that he and North had done nothing
wrong, that they were acting on the orders of the president. And that if
Congress wanted to know what the hell happened, well then damn it, he
was going to go up there and tell them, without immunity, without any
protection.
MS. FEIGIN: He didn’t want it, or you weren’t able to negotiate it?
MR. GREEN: It was something he didn’t care about. He made it clear that he didn’t
want or need immunity. He was going to tell the truth. He went up there
and I went with him but only after cautioning him about the substantial
risks. And it was a circus, the whole atmosphere. Because he was the
lead-off witness the hearing room was packed and jammed, and the dais
was full of senators. And I’ve got to hand it to him. He walked right in, sat
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right down and I think we had an opening statement that he probably read.
Then he took questions. He was up there four days and plowed through.
Arthur Liman was the committee’s counsel, a very brilliant guy.
Had his own personality but we’ll leave that aside. Secord did not
anticipate that Liman had access to some very pertinent information
concerning the financial aspects of the Iran-Contra operation — the
movement of the money and accounts that were opened in Switzerland by
North and Secord and Albert Hakim, who was a business partner of
Secord in unrelated respects.
When that came up, my guess is that General Secord was
surprised. I don’t think he registered that at the hearing. I was a bit
surprised because there were things that I was not aware of either. And I
think some of Secord’s answers to some of those questions left a number
of the issues concerning finances unresolved and with a big question mark
after them. I don’t think it was on balance great for him in that regard
because in the end I think Liman was able to tarnish him with some
suggestions about whether he and North had used some of the proceeds
generated in the arms sales for their personal benefit and whether they
intended to enrich themselves. I’d have to reread all those transcripts to
put more meat on that, but in any event, then it was over. He was off the
stand so to speak.
MS. FEIGIN: Let me ask a couple of questions about that and then we can go on. Can
you tell us a little more about Hakim?
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MR. GREEN: Albert Hakim was kind of a business partner of Secord’s; he was
represented by Dick Janis. He inserted himself into this operation by
asserting that he had expertise on financial matters and how to move
money and send money and so forth. So he was kind of an operative on
the financial side of the money moving.
MS. FEIGIN: And just to place this timewise, when he testified was Secord still in the
Air Force? Was he testifying in uniform?
MR. GREEN: No. He had left the Air Force in or about 1983 after the investigation into
the freight forwarding issues a few years earlier. North was still in the
service but not Richard.
MS. FEIGIN: So you got him through that.
MR. GREEN: I got him through that, and I thought maybe he was safe and all’s well, it
was going to end well. Secord testified in May of 1987. Lawrence Walsh
was appointed independent counsel on December 19 of 1986 so his
investigation had already started. Walsh was continuing his investigation
and ultimately Secord, North, Admiral Poindexter and Hakim were
indicted in 1988.
On November 8th, 1989 Secord pled to lying to Congress; I’ll
explain that in a minute. There were a bunch of counts in the indictment
against Secord, and Reid Weingarten, a good friend of mine, was the
prosecutor. I think it’s fair to say, even though there were very serious
offenses alleged against Secord and North, there were some that I would
call insubstantial or minor offenses, one of which was a count charging
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Secord with lying during the investigation on the Hill, lying during a
deposition to one question.
Nobody really wanted to try this case. The government was not
excited about trying it. Certainly the defendants didn’t want to have it
tried.
MS. FEIGIN: Why do you think the government didn’t want to try it? Because of the
information that might come out?
MR. GREEN: No. Because they were concerned that the immunity given to North to
obtain his congressional testimony would prevent them from using that
testimony at trial, to try North after that grant of immunity. There were
some complicated legal issues in there and that’s ultimately what
happened anyway. So Weingarten and I had long conversations. There
were some interesting defenses that this was all authorized by the
government and so on and so forth. I think just to try to get the case to be
more manageable or whatever, Weingarten was interested in seeing if he
could get Secord and me out of the case.
And so at one point – and maybe without remembering exactly
what was in the indictment — he said to me “Tom, I’ll take a plea to any
count in the indictment.” I said “Any count?” He said “Yes, any count.
I’ll take a plea to any count in the indictment. Get you out of the case, get
Secord out of the case.” I said “Okay, let me consider that.” So I went
back and reread the indictment, found this count that claimed that Secord
lied in answer to a specific question. If it was a lie, it was a lie with a
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small l, but whatever. So I came back to him and I said, okay, we’ll plead
to count whatever it is. And he looked at that and I don’t think he was very
happy, but a deal’s a deal. So we pled to that count and Secord was found
guilty of one count of misrepresentation or lying to Congress. I don’t
know the exact language.
MS. FEIGIN: I believe this was a count of lying about knowing that Oliver North had
used money for a private security system.
MR. GREEN: It was a minor issue that no one seemed to care about.
MS. FEIGIN: We haven’t really laid this out but the original indictment charged a lot of
serious crimes — bribery and heavy duty stuff, theft of government
property, wire fraud –
MR. GREEN: Yeah. There was a lot of stuff packed in there. Judge Aubrey Robinson
took Secord’s plea and sentenced him to two years of unsupervised
probation so it had a reasonably happy ending.
MS. FEIGIN: Hugely in terms of the criminal exposure for sure. Let me just ask you one
more question about the criminal case. Anything about Judge Robinson
during that plea that we should discuss because we discussed him in other
contexts. There was a lot of pretrial stuff going on I think.
MR. GREEN: There was and there was a trial for North and he was convicted. My
recollection is that his conviction was reversed because of these immunity
issues principally. And I think he was tried in front of Gerhard Gesell.
When Aubrey Robinson took Secord’s plea, he wasn’t that impressed with
the government’s position with respect to all of this.
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There is no doubt about the basic plan of operations, so to speak —
arms were moved through Israel and so forth to Iran in return for money
that went to the Nicaraguans. North and Secord were obviously not on a
detour and frolic of their own with respect to that.
I think to the extent that there’s still a cloud hanging over Secord
and North, it probably relates to the accounting for all the money and
whether there was some siphoned off along the way, which all of the
gentlemen involved claim never happened. I’m sure there are others that
think it did. But these guys were kind of run along the railroad tracks for
something that the government wanted to run away from. So when it
came time for Aubrey Robinson to sentence Secord, Secord was hopeful
that he would emerge in one piece.
MS. FEIGIN: There was a coda to the criminal case. He wound up bringing a libel action
against the author of a book called Out of Control, which accused Secord
of the much more serious charges. I know you were involved in that too. I
wonder if you could tell us about it.
MR. GREEN: I think all the principal individuals that were involved with the Iran Contra
situation were very, very sensitive to how they were perceived because
they very much believed that their operation had been sanctioned at the
highest levels of the government. And when it was exposed, and they were
subjected to scrutiny, and then criticism, then prosecution, it created a lot
of anger I’d say. They felt that they were being unfairly mistreated and
misperceived.
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Journalists are always looking for stories. And one woman, Leslie
Cockburn, wrote a book. And in that book she made a number of
allegations about Secord’s conduct. Essentially, they painted Secord and
others in a very unflattering light. The allegations I think centered around
a thesis that there was more private profiteering going on than public
service, if you may.
I remember Richard bringing this book to my attention. And I
remember him being quite upset about it. I had handled a number of
defamation cases on the plaintiff’s side so I was familiar with what it took
to allege a cause of action and what the possible defenses were.
I remember cautioning Richard that these kinds of cases are very
difficult to prevail in because he would be deemed to be a public figure.
And my recollection is he kind of resisted that notion. He didn’t want to
concede that he really was a public figure. But there’s not a perfect match
between being public as a figure and being a public figure under New York
Times v. Sullivan.
He wanted very much to file the lawsuit and I certainly felt there
were sufficient grounds to file the lawsuit. I told him we would need
substantial discovery in order to prove that a number of these allegations
were published with malice, which equates to a known falsity or reckless
disregard for the truth. And he understood that. So we were relying on our
ability to secure sufficient discovery.
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We filed the case and memory dims some of the things that
happened sequentially, but we never really got much discovery. I don’t
know whether we were opposed as a legal matter or whether it was just a
question of fighting and struggling and just not getting the things that we
thought were out there. But eventually the defendants, who were
represented by Floyd Abrams — Mr. First Amendment — brought a motion
for summary judgment. That was argued, and Judge Revercomb, who was
sitting on the federal district court in Washington at the time, concluded
that there just was not enough evidence in the record of malice. Therefore
he granted the motion for summary judgment and dismissed the
complaint.
MS. FEIGIN: Since this is an oral history for The Historical Society of the District of
Columbia Circuit, do you have any observations about Judge Revercomb?
MR. GREEN: I hardly ever appeared before Revercomb. If you had asked me before I
looked at the opinion to refresh my recollection of it, I would not have
remembered that Revercomb sat on the case. I don’t remember ever really
trying any cases in front of Revercomb. But because he ruled against me,
I clearly didn’t like him. [laughter]
MS. FEIGIN: [laughter]
MR. GREEN: But I can’t hold that against him.
MS. FEIGIN: Did he have a reputation in the court that you are aware of?
MR. GREEN: Certainly nothing negative. I think he was well thought of.
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MS. FEIGIN: And to the extent that Floyd Abrams was involved in the case – and
perhaps you had other cases with him — do you have a sense of him as a
lawyer, as an adversary?
MR. GREEN: I think Floyd deserved his reputation. He was incredibly well versed in
First Amendment law and in First Amendment decisions. I had
encountered him a couple of times along the way. Again, I’d have to look
into what the cases were. He always came with an entourage.
MS. FEIGIN: From his law firm?
MR. GREEN: Yes. He was a big name in First Amendment litigation.
MS FEIGIN: Still is.
MR. GREEN: Yeah. How old’s Floyd? He’s got to be my age at least I would think.
MS. FEIGIN: Older I believe.
MR. GREEN: But on this day he took me to the cleaners. [laughter] Happily, over the
years I took more guys to the cleaners than took me to the cleaners.
MS. FEIGIN: For sure. But before we leave that case, New York Times v. Sullivan is a
case that comes up a lot, and there’s a lot of talk that the current Court
might revisit the case. I wonder if you have any feelings about that case.
MR. GREEN: Every time the current Court revisits something, it ends tragically in my
view. I don’t want to get off on a tangent about the current Court, but I’m
so unhappy with some of the things they’re doing. New York Times v.
Sullivan should not be revisited. It is, I think, a profoundly effective
compromise between the competing interests of the publisher, on the one
hand, and the person that is claiming defamation or libel. If you do away
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with it, it’s just going to open up a floodgate of litigation. Every time
someone thinks that somebody said something negative, let’s file suit, let’s
file suit. I’m talking about people that are basically well known and public
figures. So I have no quarrel with it.
If the truth be known, if you’re a lawyer representing an individual
who claims that what was published is absolutely untrue and defamatory,
the odds are that you will be able to demonstrate that the reporter should
have doubted his or her sources or the truthfulness of what they wrote. In
other words, if it’s untrue, it’s untrue. It’s a pretty objective assessment.
The reporter can’t just say I relied on a source; Joe Blow told me this.
They have an obligation to test that assertion before they publish it. And
that’s where they’re exposed. Plus they have a lot of other inputs.
Typically, a plaintiff in a defamation case has advance knowledge that an
article is coming out or that it is underway because the reporter is engaged
in reporting. There are a number of sources of information that come back
to the individual, such that they become aware that an article is going to be
written. And because of the questions that the reporter is asking various
people, the subject matter of the article is usually understood and known.
Lots of lawyers would call the reporter and say I understand you’re
contemplating a story about my client in which you’re going to allege
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Reporters often neither confirm nor deny that.
But the lawyer often goes on to explain that’s absolutely, unquestionably
untrue and here’s why. And there’s no reason that, if you’re trying to
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avoid publication, a lawyer shouldn’t reveal what information they have to
convince the reporter that they’re on the wrong track, or about to make a
fundamental mistake that’s going to create legal peril for them. So I don’t
have a problem with New York Times v. Sullivan. I think it would be a big,
big mistake to retreat from it. I really do.
MS. FEIGIN: In the Secord case, did you reach out before the book came out?
MR. GREEN: I might have reached out. I have a vague recollection of reaching out and
having the reporters just basically tell me to take a hike, which may have
been part of the reason that we ended up suing them. I have a vague
recollection of trying to talk to the Cockburns.
MS. FEIGIN: You are an incredible crisis manager. Wen Ho Lee is obviously another
huge case. Wen Ho Lee is a name that some people down the road may
not recognize, so we should say who he was and how you got involved.
MR. GREEN: Wen Ho Lee was a physicist and ethnic Chinese. He had been working for
the government and Department of Energy for many years, stationed at
Los Alamos in New Mexico.
MS. FEIGIN: U.S. citizen?
MR. GREEN: A U.S. citizen. He was a mid-level guy out there. He didn’t have access to
the nation’s most critical sensitive secrets. But he worked on the military
aspects of armaments and bombs and so forth. Kind of stuff that Los
Alamos was doing ever since World War II ended.
At a point in time in around the late ’90s, people in the
government, in the military, in the industry started to get concerned that
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China had developed a small warhead similar to this country’s apparently
very effective small atomic warhead, that China had cracked the code on
how to make a small warhead and so forth. There was concern that maybe
information had leaked out of the military or scientific establishment.
Wen Ho Lee ultimately came under suspicion, or he was one of the
people looked at, probably because of racial profiling and also probably
because of the fact that he had taken authorized trips to Taiwan and to
China and had met with scientists in both those countries and knew them
and so forth. It got to the point where ultimately he was indicted, I think in
1999. He was represented by a guy by the name of Mark Holscher in
California, in Los Angeles, and he was convicted.
MS. FEIGIN: Was there a trial or did he plead?
MR. GREEN: He ultimately pled guilty to one felony count of illegally gathering and
retaining national security data. He never admitted to intending to harm
the United States or aid a foreign country. And he agreed to a sentence of
time served with no probation and to undergo 60 hours of debriefing.
When he was indicted he was incarcerated. The government said
he had to be jailed. He was jailed for, I think, about nine months. And
then the case fell apart. The government discovered that it just simply
didn’t have the evidence, that they couldn’t prove that he engaged in
espionage or that he mishandled secrets.
There were a lot of questionable aspects to Wen Ho Lee’s conduct.
He had downloaded a lot of information and copied a lot of information
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and so forth, but the government just couldn’t confirm and establish that
he ever actually gave it to anybody. They couldn’t trace it anywhere. They
couldn’t find out that he misused it or did anything with it. The case just
started to unravel. And it got to the point where the chances of proving
anything substantial at a trial were so flimsy that they agreed to this plea.
Because he had been locked up, which was horrible, there was a lot
of consternation and misgiving about the way he had been treated. When
he was indicted, the government went in and made these ridiculous farfetched and exaggerated arguments that if you left him out on bail he was
a serious threat to the security of the country and he had to be locked up.
And the court locked him up.
In the end, when the court finally took the plea, the judge was very
apologetic to Wen Ho Lee, saying it was a mistake to have done it. The
government should never have pushed for it. He apologized to Wen Ho
Lee for the way the prosecutors, the executive branch, had approached the
case. But even today there are suspicions that circulate about Wen Ho Lee.
He was kind of a cipher. They never could prove anything. But I’m sure
there are people walking around even today that were pushing for his
prosecution, who probably believe that he did something. But again, it’s
just never really ever been proved or established.
I had nothing to do with that criminal case. But at the time that all
that was going on, there were incredible leaks to the press. The
government, somebody was leaking to the press about Wen Ho Lee, what
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he did and so on and so on. And that conduct arguably contravenes the
Privacy Act. The government’s not allowed to do that.
So Wen Ho Lee went to a lawyer in California by the name of
Brian Sun. Brian was then, and is now still, a very good friend and buddy
of mine. Brian Sun is of Chinese ethnicity also. Very fine white-collar
lawyer. Great guy. And Brian Sun calls me up and says look, I need you to
help me on this case to sue the government for Privacy Act violations. So
to make a long story short, he comes here and we sit in my office and we
draft the complaint. Of course we had help in doing that. And then we
filed that complaint. I think we filed a second amended complaint.
MS. FEIGIN: Was that filed in D.C.?
MR. GREEN: In D.C., in front of Tom Jackson. The controversy in that case was to get
the reporters’ sources. The reporters had published these leaks, probably
came from the government somewhere. And so there was a lot of litigation
to force the reporters to cough up their sources, which is all very delicate
stuff. District court judge Tom Jackson wrote an opinion and then there
was an appellate court opinion.
To make a long story short, you don’t have a shot at getting the
sources of reporters unless you can show that you tried every other
conceivable avenue to obtain that information. In the interest of justice
you have to show that there’s no other way on the face of the globe to get
that information other than to get it from the reporters.
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The reporters resisted and they were held in contempt. The
contempt was affirmed on appeal. I think they were fined – each reporter
was fined $500 a day. There were a number of reporters, I think six or
seven maybe. The lawsuit was actually brought against the government.
The reporters were not named as defendants in the case. Their depositions
were taken in an effort to discover their sources, and that’s when they
resisted and said no, and then they were, as a result, held in contempt.
The case was scheduled for trial but ultimately the government
didn’t want to go to trial. The government was just too concerned about
their exposure and the release of sensitive information and they needed to
bring it to an end. So there were negotiations with the Department of
Justice. But there were also negotiations with the reporters because the
reporters were exposed as well down the line. They didn’t want any part
and parcel of this if they could avoid it.
I think the way it was settled is the Department of Justice paid
about $800,000 and it was styled as a payment for legal fees rather than
damages. But then we were able to collect another almost $800,000 from
these reporters, from these newspapers. And so the privacy case against
Wen Ho Lee was settled for around $1.6 million, something like that.
I did a lot of the arguments in court on these sources. Interestingly
enough, I had been involved years earlier in a case against The Wall Street
Journal. The Journal had a famous investigative reporter by the name of
Jim Drinkhall. He had written an article about a hood, a Mafia guy in
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Nevada, in Las Vegas. The gist of the article was that two Justice
Department lawyers had set out to persecute this guy. It was a really ugly
story. The two prosecutors wanted to sue for defamation. And the
Department of Justice, I can’t remember who it was, it was many years
ago, called me up and said, would you represent these guys and take their
case against The Wall Street Journal?
Jim Drinkhall was their lead investigative reporter and we had to
get his sources. And so it was the same kind of litigation in front of Chief
Judge Greene in the Superior Court in the District of Columbia. And after
a lot of litigation, he forced The Wall Street Journal to come up with their
sources. The Journal decided to throw in the towel, which they had hardly
ever done, hardly ever settled a case. I was asking for $5 million, which
back then was an enormous sum of money for a libel case. We sued on
behalf of the prosecutors, John Dowd and Michael Kramer. We sued the
Mafia guy and Jim Drinkhall and The Wall Street Journal. It was in 1984,
so it’s a long time ago.
Judge Greene ordered The Journal to cough up the sources,
Drinkhall to cough up his sources. They settled. They didn’t want to settle
for $1 million because they had never, ever settled anything for that much
so they settled for just a bit less, but a substantial victory nevertheless.
That case was one of the principal cases in this field of getting
sources from newspapers. And that case was used all over again later in
the Wen Ho Lee litigation.
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So that’s the quick story of Wen Ho Lee. He was arrested in
December of 1999. He was either fired or resigned from Los Alamos. He’s
now retired and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife.
MS. FEIGIN: Since you referenced both Judge Jackson and Judge Greene in this
reminiscence, is there anything you’d like to say about either of those
judges?
MR. GREEN: Harold Greene was a very deliberative, quiet guy. I didn’t appear before
Harold Greene very much. But he was enormously well respected.
MS. FEIGIN: No relation to you?
MR. GREEN: No relation. In fact, he spelled his name G-R-E-E-N-E.
MS. FEIGIN: We needed to make that clear for the record.
MR. GREEN: Tom Jackson was more of a hail-fellow-well-met, a much more ebullient
personality. I don’t want to get too controversial here, but with respect to
all these judges, there are people that love them and they have their
detractors too. Lawyers either love judges or dislike judges depending on
their decisions. Jackson came out of the plaintiffs’ bar. He was the son of
a very prominent lawyer in Washington of years ago and well-liked. I
think that’s all I should say about it.
MS. FEIGIN: Isn’t he known for Microsoft or some huge antitrust case, that took years?
MR. GREEN: I think he did Microsoft. So that’s the story of Wen Ho Lee.
MS. FEIGIN: Okay. Let me just ask one tangential question about Wen Ho Lee. This
wasn’t the part that you represented him on but it struck me as very
unusual when you said it. You said that one of the things he agreed to was
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to undergo 60 hours of debriefing. I have never heard of a debriefing
limited by time like that. Usually it’s simply debriefing as warranted.
MR. GREEN: It doesn’t happen a lot but it’s not unheard of.
MS. FEIGIN: Knowing there is a limit, you could imagine somebody dragging it out so
that certain information doesn’t come out in the allotted time.
MR. GREEN: According to Wen Ho Lee, he was a simple guy. He was not complex. He
went to China, okay, so he went to China and he had meals at a restaurant,
and he talked to Moe and Joe and Charlie. He came home.
MS. FEIGIN: [laughter]
MR. GREEN: He was able to tell them certain things. He had made some mistakes in the
way that he had handled classified information. He described that and he
admitted that I believe. He was forthright. I think he probably could have
been more observant of the typical restraints that attached to this material.
But nothing came out of those interviews. Nothing came out of those 60
hours that was a bombshell and the government suddenly went off to
pursue X or Y. There were no arrests; nothing dramatic happened.
MS. FEIGIN: I think ultimately the president, Clinton at the time, wound up apologizing
to Wen Ho Lee.
MR. GREEN: I know he announced or stated publicly that the case was a concern to him,
but I don’t know whether he ever called the guy up and said I’m sorry.
MS. FEIGIN: I don’t know about that. I think Bill Richardson was the Secretary of
Energy and he was really involved in talking about this case.
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MR. GREEN: Richardson had run his mouth about this case but I think that was to
promote Richardson. He wanted to look like he was saving America as
usual, that kind of thing. But yes, he was a big detractor of Ho and
pushing to have something happen here to Wen Ho Lee.
MS. FEIGIN: This is a good point to end today’s session. Thank you again, always
fascinating cases. Thank you deeply.