"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him." -- John Locke
In September 1977, my parents dropped me off at Wittenberg University in southwestern Ohio and thus began a life independent of my family upbringing. For the next four years, I pursued a liberal arts education, sampling introductory courses in psychology, the physical sciences, history, and literature; and I explored more deeply the theoretical underpinnings of economics and the practical craft of accounting. Although I did not fully appreciate it then, my college years began what has become a lifelong quest for learning and desire to better understand the world around me.
It was perhaps this same desire to learn and remain curious, coupled with freedom of thought and speech, which led the authors of the Declaration of Independence to include “the pursuit of happiness” as among the unalienable rights and self-evident truths that were rudimentary to the aspirational ideals of a national movement.
Noble ideals notwithstanding, upon graduating college I had no choice but to pay the bills associated with independence and adulthood. And thus, for the next forty-four years, my introspective life obligingly coexisted with a life of labor. I puzzled over the desire to balance a life of the mind while actively engaging with commerce, the physical world, and the people and places I encountered.
It would take time to achieve that balance. In my first job after college, I worked as an underutilized, entry-level accountant at an oil services company in Houston, Texas. It was boring and unfulfilling work. The best part of each day was sneaking away to the nearby news stand to read the latest copies of The New Republic, The Economist, Time and Newsweek, and spending lunch hour at the local bookstore perusing tomes on history, politics, and current events. I was hungry for knowledge and filled with a desire to participate meaningfully in the world arena, which seemed light years apart from my mundane existence in a dead-end job.
So, in August 1982, I packed my belongings into a gas guzzling 1975 Chrysler Cordoba (yes, with Corinthian leather seats) and drove 1,400 miles to Washington, DC, to attend law school at George Washington University. Law school in the nation’s capital was a perfect antidote to my uninspired year in Houston. To me, Washington was a magical city filled with monuments and memorials marking key moments and leading figures in American history, world renowned museums with free admission, and rows of majestic buildings representing the institutions of democracy and the rule of law. I quickly discovered that my classmates were equally interested in politics and government, and most were critical of the Reagan Revolution, an anti-government backlash to the New Deal and Great Society that had dominated American politics for the previous 50 years. The academic elements of law school were a welcome respite from my prior 9-to-5 existence as an accountant, and law school balanced theoretical learning with the practical realities of earning a living in a consequential profession.
When I graduated law school three years later, I embarked on a career that proved to be as enriching and fulfilling as any I could have realistically hoped for. Starting out as a judicial law clerk to Judge John A. Terry of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, I learned firsthand how the law impacted every aspect of society, from simple contract disputes that threatened the existence of livelihoods and businesses to critical issues of criminal procedure that determined whether someone was freed or remained imprisoned. I examined government regulations designed to protect societal interests and helped assess whether the imposed rules rationally advanced the intended objectives or arbitrarily harmed individuals and businesses. And I became more deeply aware of the fights for gay rights, women’s equality, and reproductive freedom. In a seminal case decided that year, I quietly advocated in the judge’s chambers for Judge Terry to join with other members of the court in ruling that Georgetown University’s refusal to recognize a gay student group violated the DC Human Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. It was a heady time for me, living and working in the nation’s capital and dreaming of someday playing a meaningful role.
By now, I knew I wanted to be a prosecutor. Judge Terry had been Chief of Appeals at the US Attorney’s Office in DC before being appointed as a judge, and I had interned with the office during the summer of 1983; happily, I received a job offer in the spring of 1986 to start as an Assistant U.S. Attorney once my clerkship ended. But conservative hardball politics intervened when Congress placed a hiring freeze on all government offices in a misguided effort to reduce government spending without regard for the things that people needed (including criminal law enforcement in a city that then led the nation in murders and violent crime). This setback led me on a two-year detour into private law practice at the firm of Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin. There I worked with dynamic and charismatic lawyers in a firm that started in the late 1940s defending individuals accused of violating government loyalty oaths imposed by the Truman administration. It eventually grew into one of the few established DC law firms that represented labor unions while also developing a corporate litigation practice.
Shortly after I joined the firm, I was assigned to work with senior partner Leonard Garment, formerly President Nixon’s White House Counsel, and junior partner Scooter Libby, who would 20 years later be convicted in the Valerie Plame leak scandal while he was Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheyney. In the 1980s, Garment was a Republican version of Clark Clifford, the lawyer high-level government officials turned to when under investigation. In a prior life, Garment played saxophone for the Benny Goodman Band, and he was a colorful storyteller that attracted powerful clients. It was common to see such figures as former Attorney General Ed Meese or former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane exit an elevator and head towards Garment’s office (this was during the Iran-Contra scandal and other ethical lapses in the Reagan administration).
Garment also represented fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, who had fled to Switzerland to evade federal tax evasion charges filed by then US Attorney Rudy Giuliani of the Southern District of New York. I spent many late nights researching legal theories and examining documents in an attempt to defend Rich, who ironically had been the subject of an article I had published in the George Washington Journal of Law and Economics during my second year of law school (the article reflected my prosecutorial bias and was not favorable to Rich’s hoped for legal defense, but Garment and Libby liked that I was intricately familiar with the indictment and relevant legal issues when they asked me to work on the case, a topic for another time). Overall, my two years with Dickstein Shapiro were interesting and enjoyable, but private practice was profit driven and (appropriately) focused on a client’s individual interests irrespective of the public interest, which did not satisfy my public service ideals. I also knew that it might be years, if ever, before I managed my own cases or learned the ins and outs of a courtroom, which hardened my desire to join a big city prosecutor’s office and handle cases for which I was solely responsible.
Thus, in October 1988, the hiring freeze ended, I began an 18-year career as an Assistant United States Attorney, first in the District of Columbia and later in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. As a criminal prosecutor, I tried close to fifty criminal jury trials and argued dozens of cases on appeal. I prosecuted everything from drug dealing and money laundering to armed robbery, murder, rape, racketeering, violent drug gangs, and a variety of white-collar crimes. It was an exciting and fascinating career, in which I did every day what most people experience only in books and movies. I confronted elements of life to which most other lawyers and professionals do not encounter, navigating a world of criminals and crime victims, police officers and federal agents, colorful defense counsel, shady witnesses, and occasionally grumpy judges and skeptical juries.
As much as I loved life as a prosecutor, constant exposure to the underbelly of society takes its toll. My last trial in federal court involved a major drug kingpin named Kaboni Savage. After leading a two-year federal grand jury investigation that included FBI wiretaps and search warrants, I indicted Savage and nineteen co-defendants in a multi-year cocaine dealing and money laundering conspiracy. Shortly after Savage’s arrest, while jailed at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, he ordered a hit on the family of cooperating witness Eugene Coleman, a long-time drug associate of Savage’s who had turned state’s evidence and was in the witness protection program. On the night of October 9, 2004, two Savage associates firebombed a north Philadelphia rowhouse causing the house to erupt in flames. Six people died that night, including Coleman’s mother, fifteen-month-old son, Coleman’s cousin and her three children. It shook my world. Although Savage was convicted at trial and sentenced to a lengthy prison term (several years later he was held responsible for the firebombing of Colemans’ family and six other murders and sentenced to death, although President Biden recently commuted the sentence to life without parole), I decided it was time for a change.
In September 2006, I reluctantly left the job of my dreams and the career I had intended to stay in for life, and joined Kroll, a global investigations firm. Although I knew almost nothing about Kroll when I was a offered a job there, it seemed like a good transition from being a prosecutor, for I would continue to investigate alleged wrongdoing, mostly in a corporate context, and my mission would remain committed to searching for the truth without a preconceived agenda, bias, or concern for where the facts and evidence may lead. I could live with that.
As a former prosecutor who entered the private sector reluctantly, I happily discovered that much of Kroll’s work involved investigating and preventing corporate fraud and wrongdoing. I quickly became involved in some of the firm’s most interesting matters, investigating alleged misconduct by North Carolina State Troopers, date rapes and sexual assaults at colleges and universities, an admissions scandal at the University of Texas, an off campus shooting by a University of Cincinnati Police Officer, multi-million-dollar corporate embezzlement schemes, leaks of confidential information, and death threats directed at corporate executives. Among my most impactful work were police department reviews designed to help the departments better perform their duties consistent with best practices and 21st Century policing techniques that focused on community engagement, critical thinking, and empathetic policing. When properly implemented, these techniques reduce unlawful uses of force and enhance public trust and police legitimacy.
Although I may not have changed the world, and I never held higher office, I never again experienced the boredom of my uninspired year as a low-level accountant in Houston. Of course, such a work-focused life does not permit one to reflect on the things that truly matter, and it compromises quality time with family. I frequently asked myself if it was even possible to live a truly balanced life. When my first marriage ended in divorce, I became more intentional with the time I spent with my children, and I prioritized fatherhood in ways that made me a better person. When I met the woman to whom I am currently married, I understood finally the beauty of a sincere and loving relationship. As my youthfulness faded and I realized how limited is our time on this planet, I began to write and reflect more deeply about things that matter.
Starting in 2008, I created this blog and wrote consistently for nine years. Although it was sometimes difficult to write while also balancing a demanding job with my responsibilities as a father, I am grateful that I found a way to “do it all.” Eventually, the money-making pressures of the “business” I was in (this is what most distinguishes the private sector from public service) caused me to cut back on the time I had to reflect, think, and write. But now, after 40 years of working non-stop since I graduated law school, I have decided it is time to slow down.
In October, I retired and left for a two-week trip to France with Andrea, leaving my laptop and work life behind. After walking the streets of Paris, experiencing wine tastings in southern France, and feasting on elegant French cuisine, I am eager to return to the contemplative life. While I may be foregoing my prior pressure-filled life of labor and work, I do not intend to become a man of leisure. Instead, I intend to think more deeply about life in all its dimensions, the nature of the universe and our place within it; about people who inspire me, and what we can continue to learn from history, art and poetry, and, for me, at least, from baseball.
So, I am back with the hopeful determination to again write and post essays on this blog that will help me think about and analyze the issues and events on my mind, and which, I hope, will modestly enhance the lives of my readers. Thank you for joining me on this continued journey, and may the new year bring us all more joy, reflection, and kindness.
“Let us read and let us dance. These two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” – Voltaire
