Robert S. Bennett - In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer

CONTENTS

To Ellen, Catherine, Peggy, and Sarah,
the loves of my life

INTRODUCTION

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: We will hear argument now in No. 95-1853, William Jefferson Clinton v. Paula Jones, Mr. Bennett.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court: I am here this morning on behalf of thePresident of the United States, who has asked this Court to defer a private civil damage suit for money damages against him until he leaves office.

I T WAS A FEW MINUTES after 10:00 A.M. on January 13, 1997. This was a lawyers fantasythe stuff of dreams. But here I was, a kid from Brooklyn standing at the podium in this marble palace, arguing before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of our forty-second president, William Jefferson Clinton.

A chill ran up my spine, and I was nervous and thrilled as I looked at the black-robed justices. I wished for a moment that my parents were alive to see this day but was happy and proud that my wonderful wife, Ellen, and daughters, Catherine, Peggy, and Sarah, were there to watch this special moment in my life.

The law has been good to me. As a child I had read The Arabian Nights and was fascinated by the magic carpet that could transport its rider to a variety of wondrous places. The law has been my magic carpet. It has allowed me to work with, meet, and represent many interesting people, from bookies to corporate titans, public figures of all stripes, even a president of the United States. I have learned from them all. Some of the lessons were positive; others, not. I have written this book because I want to share the ride with you and so that someday when I am gone, my childrens children and their children will know who I was and what I did, and hopefully they and the many young lawyers to come will learn some lessons from my exciting and interesting life in the law.

This is a memoir and not an autobiography. I will tell you about myself and my family, but only to give background and context to my story. This is not about me. I am simply not important enough or exceptional enough to waste time focusing on each event in my life or nuance of my personality. I have had an interesting life in the law and have learned much about life as a result of it, and I want to share it with you, but to appreciate the message and properly evaluate it, you should know at least something about the messenger. So here goes.

CHAPTER ONE

THE CARDS YOURE DEALT

O N AUGUST 2, 1939, I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I was the first child of Nancy Walsh Bennett and F. Robert Bennett. Mother was a housewife and Dad worked for a bank. We lived at 698 St. Marks Avenue in what is now known as the Bedford-Stuyvesant section. It was much different in the thirties and forties than it is today. Then, it was a safe and secure neighborhood consisting of middle-and upper-middle-class homes. The house was a large brownstone that was owned by my grandmother Irene Szalay and my step-grandfather, Dr. Stephen Charles Szalay.

My brother, Bill, was born on July 31, 1943. While I am sure that it was quite a shock to no longer be the center of attention, it didnt take me long to realize how wonderful it was to have a brother. From the very earliest of days, I felt a strong protective instinct toward him, which has continued to this day. While now he is very able to take care of himself, in his early years he was shy, quiet, and nonaggressive. My, how time changes things. It was standard fare for me to return from grade school and be given a list of neighborhood bullies who had mistreated Bill, then I did my brotherly duty of evening the score. No one was going to hit my little brother. That was a privilege I reserved for myself. From his early years, Bill was a great student and an avid reader. I am sure we read many of the same things, but unlike me, he remembers everything he reads. More about Bill later.

Grandmother Irene Szalay, my mothers mother, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and came to the United States as a very young child. She was married three times and gave birth to four children. Gladys and John were born of the first marriage, Bill and my mother, Nancy, were born of a marriage to an Irishman, Dr. Joseph Walsh, a prominent doctor who at nineteen was the youngest person ever to receive a medical degree in the United States. Their marriage ended in a bitter divorce, the reports of which filled the newspapers. While the Irish genes and mannerisms from Joe Walsh, my mothers dad, seem to have taken over in my case and Bills, the only grandfather we knew was our Hungarian step-grandfather, Dr. Szalay. Unfortunately, very little is known about my fathers side of the family, but I do understand that we have English and German ancestry on his side.

Dr. Szalay was an old-school doctor. He saw as many as fifty patients a day and made house calls. The ability of a patient to pay made no difference to him. He felt that one does not go into a profession to make money, but to serve. When he received money for his services, he had the unusual habit of washing it. This was not the type of money laundering that would engage my legal expertise in the future; he always told me that money carries germs. Bobby, you never know where it has been. Its been in lots of places. This is one lesson I have never followed. I can still see him sitting at his desk, after all his patients had left and after he had washed the money, playing classical records with baton in hand following the music as if he were conducting the worlds great orchestras.

Dr. Szalay was a true renaissance man. He spoke several languages, was an engineer, a first-class photographer, and a superb musician. In his early teens, he played the cello in an orchestra in Budapest. He was a man of strong opinion and when discussing politics, he had a quick temper. He was very good to me, helping with my studies, covering my school books with strong brown paper and doctors adhesive tape to protect the corners. When he died, I was about ten. I felt a great loss and was worried about his soul. As far as I could tell, he was not a religious man in any way. If he did believe in God, I saw no evidence of it, which caused me great concern. I recall placing a set of rosary beads in his hand as he lay dying hoping that this would allow him to go in the right direction. Because Dr. Szalay wanted me to play the cello, it was an enormous disappointment to him when, after a few lessons, I told him it was not for me. I had a tin ear and found lessons painful. Some fifty years later, I was invited to sit with the National Symphony Orchestra for a special event. When I was asked which section I wished to sit in, I said the cello section. I sat next to Glenn Garlick, the assistant principal cellist for the orchestra, and tears formed in my eyes as I thought about Grandpa Szalay and whispered under my breath, Grandpa, this is the best I can do.

Grandmother was a strong-willed woman who was very loving and caring. Not a day went by that I was not on the receiving end of her age-old maxims, which she believed were the formula for a successful and honorable life: Be on time. People will not respect you if you dress like a bum. The lazy man pays twice, etc. These and many other sayings were given to me by her throughout her life. Most important of all to her was honesty. Grandma did not accept the notion that little white lies were all right. There was nothing worse than telling a liebig or small. While my brother, Bill, didnt know it at the time, the seeds for his