Significant Moments: Me and Ed Knight -- Always the Young Know-It-All

In fairness to the rabbis we must note that [Spinoza’s friend and biographer] Lucas, though strongly sympathetic with Spinoza, records that when [Rabbi] Morteira recalled the loving care he had given to the education of his favorite pupil, Baruch . . .
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
—admittedly . . .
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.
. . . a young know-it-all . . .
Charles L. Mee, Jr., Rembrandt’s Portrait: A Biography.
. . . cast as the rebel, the “heretic,” . . .
Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
. . . “answered that in return for the trouble Morteira had taken in teaching him the Hebrew language, he [Spinoza] would now be glad to teach his instructor how to excommunicate.”
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.

Ed Knight was a partner at the DC law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld where I worked until late October 1991. Ed Knight later served as Treasury Department General Counsel during the Clinton Administration under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a close friend of Bob Strauss. Ed Knight worked in the Legislative Practice Group -- a euphemism for lobbying. Coincidentally, Ed Knight worked on the firm's 12th floor as did President Clinton's close friend, Vernon Jordan.

People have been asking me, they've been coming up to me and asking, "Say, you never talk about Ed Knight. You have paranoid ideas about everybody. But you never talk about having paranoid ideas about Ed Knight. What's going on? Didn't you have any paranoid ideas about Ed Knight?"

Well, as a matter of fact, I did have a paranoid idea of reference -- one idea of reference -- about Mr. Knight early in the year 1990. How do I remember the incident occurred in 1990? Well, in January 1990 I started seeing a psychiatrist, Stanley R. Palombo, MD. Things were going well with Dr. Palombo. I had the paranoid idea that Dr. Palombo was reporting back to Malcolm Lassman and/or Earl Segal about me. I also believed that news about my psychotherapy was being leaked to people all over the firm.

In the period early in my therapy with Dr. Palombo, I got on an elevator with Ed Knight. The elevator stopped briefly, then started moving up. Ed Knight said to me, "It looks like we're going to make it after all." I had the paranoid idea that Ed Knight was symbolically talking about my work with Dr. Palombo -- as if he were saying: "well, kid, it looks like you're going to make it after all -- when Dr. Palombo gets you fixed up."

Being a young know-it-all I said to Ed Knight: "I don't know about you, but I know that I'm going to make it." Ed Knight looked at me blankly.

I once attended a legislative seminar for paralegals that was chaired by Ed Knight. I remember that I, the young know-it-all, asked Ed Knight: "Bob Strauss is such a sexy figure. Doesn't the success of the legislative group have a lot to do with Bob Strauss being on the team? What will happen to the legislative group's success after Bob Strauss is gone?" Ed Knight said that the success of the legislative group was not based on the presence of Bob Strauss. The group would continue successfully even without Bob Strauss.

By the way, I've always loved the following letter. It's one of my masterpieces.

January 5, 2005
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apartment 136
Washington, DC 20008

U.S. Secret Service
245 Murray Drive
Building 410
Washington, DC 20223

Dear Sir:

This will advise the U.S. Secret Service that I have been the victim of an ongoing fraud and racketeering conspiracy run by attorney managers of the Washington, DC law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld: a criminal enterprise that has involved The George Washington University Medical Center Medical Faculty Associates, The District of Columbia Public Library (Richard Jackson, Interim Director), as well as several high-level federal officials including former President William Jefferson Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, and former Treasury General Counsel, Edward S. Knight, Esq.

The Government of the District of Columbia (Office of The Corporation Counsel) determined (in 1997) that I formed a genuine and good-faith belief (though unsupported by fact) that in January 1990 members of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld (a class of persons that included Edward S. Knight, Esq.) gained unlawful entry to my apartment (at the above address), and that the unlawful entry was made with the knowledge and consent of the firm's management committee (a class of persons that includes Robert S. Strauss, Esq. and Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq.). Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, 96-CV-961 (DCCA, Sept. 1998), Brief of Appellee District of Columbia at 9. The firm did not dispute the District's determination or its legal or factual relevance.

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. is a close personal friend of former President Clinton's.

Secret Service Special Agent Philip C. Leadroot (now retired) is familiar with this matter.

Enclosed is a collection of pertinent documents.

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman