Edward Bennett Williams

Edward Bennett Williams (1920-1988) was one of the best known and most successful trial lawyers in Washington in his day. Well connected politically, he had access to every president from John Kennedy through Ronald Reagan. A sports fan, Williams was part owner of the Washington Redskins football team and the Baltimore Orioles baseball club.

As a defense attorney, Williams represented some of the most colorful and controversial figures of the mid to late twentieth century. His clients included singer Frank Sinatra, fugitive financier Robert Vesco, Soviet spy Igor Melekh, Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, reputed Mafioso Frank Costello, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the Reverend Sun-Young Moon, founder of the Unification Church. According to biographer Evan Thomas, author of The Man to See: Edward Bennett Williams—Legendary Trial Lawyer, Ultimate Insider, Williams wasn't content to be just a great lawyer: "He wanted power, and he wanted to be seen as a force for larger ends than the narrow representation of his clients. He was, at least in the beginning, an effective crusader for individual freedom."

Quick Rise as Lawyer

The only child of Joseph Barnard Williams, a department store detective, and Mary Bennett Williams, a homemaker, he was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 31, 1920. Shortly after the beginning of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Joseph Williams's father lost his job and was often out of work during the lean years that followed. To help the family make ends meet, young Williams worked after school. A good student at Bulkeley High School in Hartford, he won an academic scholarship to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he distinguished himself as a first-rate debater. In 1941, he graduated from Holy Cross summa cum laude.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, thrusting the United States into World War II, Williams joined the U.S. Army Air Forces but was discharged after sustaining a back injury in training. After his brief stint in the military, Williams began studying for his law degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He graduated in 1944 and was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1945. That same year he joined the prestigious Washington law firm of Hogan and Hartson. On May 3, 1946, Williams married Dorothy Adair Guider, with whom he had three children.

By the end of the 1940s Williams left Hogan and Hartson to open his own law office. He specialized in cases dealing with civil liberties and first came to prominence in the early 1950s when he represented U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin in censure proceedings. A number of McCarthy's fellow senators had charged him with abusing his power as chairman of a subcommittee investigating Communist Party infiltration into the federal government and military. Williams skillfully negotiated an agreement with senators to dismiss the censure charge and substitute for it a much milder punishment. However, the deal fell apart when McCarthy suggested in a speech that those senators arrayed against him were "unwitting handmaidens" of the Communist Party.

Tangled with Buckley

Years later, conservative commentator William F. Buckley, publisher of the National Review, recalled his stormy relationship with Williams over the years. In the summer of 1954, Buckley was first approached by the attorney, who pleaded for his help in clearing the name of McCarthy, a man he characterized as "a great and important American," Buckley recalled. The publisher recommended that Williams seek the assistance of L. Brent Bozell, Buckley's brother-in-law, in his defense of McCarthy. But Bozell had written the McCarthy speech that sabotaged the deal negotiated by Williams. Buckley's next encounter with Williams came when the Washington attorney agreed to defend Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York on charges of income tax evasion that were first brought to light in an expose by Buckley. The relationship between Buckley and Williams deteriorated even further when the National Review panned One Man's Freedom, a book by Williams about civil liberties. Not long after, Williams, in a speech at Yale, referred to Buckley as "an Ivy League George Rockwell." Buckley threatened to sue for libel, and Williams eventually retracted the statement. In the end, although their politics put them poles apart, an uneasy truce was struck between Williams and Buckley.

Although his defense of McCarthy first brought Williams to national attention, he was equally comfortable representing the Communists and fellow travelers that the senator from Wisconsin was trying to track down. As biographer Thomas observed, "Williams would defend anyone, he liked to say, as long as the client gave him total control of the case and paid up front. He would represent Mafia dons and pornographers for enormous fees. He would also represent priests, judges, and attractive women in distress for little or nothing." After his defense of McCarthy, Williams was called a fascist by those who abhorred the Wisconsin senator and his witch-hunt. At the same time, others branded him a Communist sympathizer because of his representation of several people accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Williams's willingness to represent almost anyone brought him criticism throughout his career. His own views were expressed in One Man's Freedom, published in 1992. In it, he wrote: "The lawyer is neither expected nor qualified to make a moral judgement on the person seeking his help."

Williams suffered a personal tragedy in 1959 when his wife, Dorothy, died. In June 1960 he married Agnes Anne Neill. The couple had four children.

Defended Hoffa

In the early 1960s, Williams took on another notorious client, Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa. Indicted on charges that he had taken kickbacks from a Detroit trucking company, Hoffa escaped conviction because the jury deadlocked. However, the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was not through with Hoffa, who eventually was sent to prison in 1967. Williams felt strongly that the strategy the government employed against Hoffa was fundamentally unfair.

Another of his more notorious clients was Frank Costello, alleged by the government to be a key figure in organized crime. Costello, facing charges of tax evasion and possible deportation, reportedly was reluctant to retain Williams because of the attorney's defense of McCarthy. Costello was convicted of tax evasion but with the help of Williams managed to avoid deportation.

An attorney of uncommon skill, Williams was most at home in the courtroom, where he won his greatest victories. He also was fascinated by the political intrigues of Washington and forged strong alliances with many of the most influential politicians in the nation's capital. Although he was a lifelong Democrat, Williams counseled Republicans and Democrats alike. In 1974 he was elected national treasurer of the Democratic Party, a post he held until 1977. So highly regarded was Williams that in the early 1970s General Alexander Haig, a close adviser to Richard Nixon, urged the president to retain Williams to provide legal advice during the Watergate affair. Nixon, however, rejected Haig's suggestion, mostly because Williams was a Democrat. Williams had been closely identified with the Kennedy family and the Washington Post, two of Nixon's biggest enemies.

In 1967, Williams abandoned the solo practice he had opened in 1949 and founded the law firm of Williams and Connolly. In the years that followed, the firm was widely recognized as one of the most successful criminal law practices in the country. Many prominent Republicans hired him. For John Connally, secretary of the Treasury under Nixon, Williams won an acquittal on charges of bribery in connection with the approval of federal price supports for milk production. Williams also represented former CIA Director Richard Helms, accused of lying to a congressional committee.

"Back on the Front Page"

It was Williams' representation of Connally that put the attorney "back on the front page," according to biographer Evan Thomas. When Connally ran afoul of the law in the mid-1970s, it had been nearly 15 years—since Williams had kept Powell out of jail in 1960—that Williams had taken a high-profile case. Williams jumped at the opportunity to defend Connally. His handling of the case, according to Thomas, provided a "how-to guide for the defense of politicians accused of corruption."

According to Thomas's account, Williams celebrated his win in the Connally case by getting drunk at the post-trial victory party, held in the Watergate apartment of Robert Strauss, chairman of the Democratic Party. President Gerald Ford called to congratulate Williams, and so did Richard Nixon. "I wish you were my lawyer," Nixon told Williams, according to Thomas. "It's too bad you represent the Post." The disgraced former president, then living in exile on the West Coast, invited Williams to come visit him in San Clemente. A few weeks later Williams said that if he had been Nixon's lawyer during the Watergate scandal, he would have urged the president to burn the Oval Office tapes on the White House lawn.

Outside the courtroom, one of Williams's greatest passions was sports. He was part owner of both the Washington Redskins football franchise and the Baltimore Orioles baseball club. Williams was overjoyed in 1983 when both teams captured the ultimate prize in their respective sports, the Redskins winning in the Super Bowl and the Orioles taking the World Series.

Williams died at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington on August 13, 1988, after a lengthy battle with colon cancer. Buckley wrote in National Review: "He was larger than life, always something of a mystery to his associates. He worked every day, including Sundays, and yet he was simultaneously everywhere, owner of athletic teams, hotels, counselor to the mighty, Democratic official with less than jerky-left positions (an improvement over his book). A year ago I had a call. Would I telephone the president and urge him to name Ed Williams as head of the CIA to succeed Bill Casey? I was able to do so with enthusiasm: but was told that Ed was sick. We had been hearing this for years, except this time, he died. We mourn the death of a big man, all-American."

Books

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale Group, 1999.

Newsmakers, Gale Research, 1988.

Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 2: 1986-1990, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

Periodicals

National Review, September 16, 1988.

Washington Monthly, October 1991. □

Morley, Edward Williams (1838-1923)

American physicist

Originally trained for the ministry, Edward Williams Morley decided instead in 1868 to pursue a career in science, the other great love of his life. Initially, Morley devoted himself primarily to teaching, but gradually became engaged in original research. His work can be divided into three major categories: the first two involved the determination of the oxygen content of the atmosphere and efforts to evaluate Prout's hypothesis. His third field of research involved experiments on the velocity of light, and it was this research that brought him scientific notoriety.

Morley was born in Newark, New Jersey, on January 29, 1838. His mother was the former Anna Clarissa Treat, a schoolteacher, and his father was Sardis Brewster Morley, a Congregational minister. According to a biographical sketch of Morley in the December 1987 issue of the Physics Teacher, the Morley family had come to the United States in early Colonial days and "was noted for its deep patriotism and religious devotion."

Morley's early education took place entirely at home, and he first entered a formal classroom at the age of nineteen when he was admitted to Williams College in Williamston, Massachusetts, as a sophomore. His plans were to study for the ministry and to follow his father in a religious vocation. He also took a variety of courses in science and mathematics, including astronomy, chemistry , calculus, and optics. His courses at Williams were a continuation of an interest in science that he had developed at home as a young boy.

Morley graduated from Williams as valedictorian of his class with a bachelor of arts degree in 1860. He then stayed on for a year to do astronomical research with Albert Hopkins. Morley's biographers allude to the careful and precise calculations required in this work as typical of the kind of research Morley most enjoyed doing.

After completing his work with Hopkins, Morley entered the Andover Theological Seminary to complete his preparation for the ministry, while concurrently earning his master's degree from Williams. Morley graduated from Andover in 1864, but rather than finding a church, he took a job at the Sanitary Commission at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. There he worked with Union soldiers wounded in the Civil War.

His work completed at Fortress Monroe, Morley returned to Andover for a year and then, failing to find a ministerial position, took a job teaching science at the South Berkshire Academy in Marlboro, Massachusetts. It was at Marlboro that Morley met his future wife, Isabella Birdsall. The couple was married in 1868. Morley had finally received an offer in September, 1868, to become minister at the Congregational church in Twinsburg, Ohio. He accepted the offer but, according to biographers David D. Skwire and Laurence J. Badar in the Physics Teacher, became disenchanted with "the low salary and rustic atmosphere" at Twinsburg and quickly made a crucial decision: he would leave the ministry and devote his life to science.

The opportunity to make such a change had presented itself shortly after Morley arrived in Twinsburg when he was offered a position teaching chemistry, botany, geology , and mineralogy at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio. Morley accepted, and when Western Reserve was moved to Cleveland in 1882, Morley followed. While still in Hudson, Morley was assigned to a full teaching load, but still managed to carry out his first major research project. That project involved a test of the so-called Loomis hypothesis, which held that during periods of high atmospheric pressure , air is carried from upper parts of the atmosphere to the earth's surface. Morley made precise measurements of the oxygen content in air for 110 consecutive days, and his results appeared to confirm the theory.

In Cleveland, Morley became involved in two important research studies almost simultaneously. The first was an effort at obtaining a precise value for the atomic weight of oxygen, in order to evaluate a well-known hypothesis proposed by the English chemist William Prout in 1815. Prout had suggested that all atoms are constructed of various combinations of hydrogen atoms.

Morley (as well as many other scientists) reasoned that should this hypothesis by true, the atomic weight of oxygen (and other elements) must be some integral multiple of that of hydrogen. For more than a decade, Morley carried out very precise measurement of the ratios in which oxygen and hydrogen combine and of the densities of the two gases. He reported in 1895 that the atomic weight of oxygen was 15.897, a result that he contended invalidated Prout's hypothesis.

Even better known than his oxygen research, however, was a line of study carried out by Morley in collaboration with Albert A. Michelson, professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science, adjacent to Western Reserve's new campus in Cleveland. Morley and Michelson designed and carried out a series of experiments on the velocity of light. The most famous of those experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that light travels with different velocities depending on the direction in which it moves, a hypothesis required by current theories regarding the way light is transmitted through space . A positive result for that experiment was expected and would have confirmed existing beliefs that the transmission of light is made possible by an invisible "ether" that permeates all of space.

In 1886, Michelson and Morley published their report of what has become known as the most famous of all negative experiments. They found no difference in the velocity with which light travels, no matter what direction the observation is made. That result caused a dramatic and fundamental rethinking of many basic concepts in physics and provided a critical piece of data for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

The research on oxygen and the velocity of light were the high points of Morley's scientific career. After many years of intense research, Morley's health began to deteriorate. To recover, he took a leave of absence from Western Reserve for a year in 1895 and traveled to Europe with his wife. When he returned to Cleveland, he found that his laboratory had been dismantled and some of his equipment had been destroyed. Although he remained at Western Reserve for another decade, he never again regained the enthusiasm for research that he had had before his vacation.

Morley died on February 24, 1923, in West Hartford, Connecticut, where he and Isabella had moved after his retirement in 1906; she predeceased him by only three weeks. Morley was nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1902, and received a number of other honors including the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1907, the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1912, and the Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society in 1917. He served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1895 and of the American Chemical Society in 1899.

See also Atmospheric chemistry; Atmospheric composition and structure; Quantum theory and mechanics