In 1999 I sent a job application to John F. Kennedy, Jr.--founder of George magazine. Oddly enough, that was just months before Mr. Kennedy died. Mr. Kennedy's surviving sister is the accomplished lawyer and author, Caroline Kennedy.
January 4, 1999
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Marzano Lee, S.A.
U.S. Secret Service
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Mr. Lee:
Enclosed is a copy of a letter addressed to John F. Kennedy, Jr. at George Magazine that I plan to forward in connection with a job inquiry. I hold a degree in journalism, and qualify for consideration for an editorial position at that publication.
Coincidentally, Mr. Kennedy's mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was a friend of Akin Gump partner Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Mr. Jordan and Mrs. Kennedy, who worked in publishing as a book editor, both had summer homes on Martha's Vineyard. Maurice Tempelsman, a New York diamond dealer, whose firm Lazare Kaplan International, has extensive business ties to several African countries, was a close friend and financial adviser of Mrs. Kennedy's. Tempelsman is a major Democratic party donor and has had personal contacts with President Clinton. Tempelsman has flown with the President on Air Force One. Tempelsman, who is Jewish, is a cultivated man with an interest in the arts and literature.
Incidentally, Mr. Kennedy was a student at the University of Dehli in India in the year 1985.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
January 4, 1999
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
John F. Kennedy, Jr.
George Magazine
1633 Broadway -- 41st Floor
New York, NY 10019-6708
Dear Mr. Kennedy:
I hold a degree in journalism awarded by The Pennsylvania State University (B.A., 1975), and qualify for consideration for an editorial position at George Magazine. Preliminary to forwarding a copy of my resume to George Magazine I believe I have a legal duty to advise you of the following facts regarding concerns about my potential for armed violence or homicide, intent to purchase firearms to commit a felony, and the illegal transport of a deadly weapon: concerns placed in controversy and affirmed, by the District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel (Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq.), as relating to genuine fears about my criminal intent.
The Government of the District of Columbia has affirmed that my former employer, the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld ("Akin Gump") terminated my employment in October 1991 on the basis of genuine concerns about my mental health and stability, including the potential for violence. The employer's termination decision was made following an ex parte consultation with a psychiatrist who did not examine me personally. Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, D.C. Superior Court no. MPA 95-14 (final order, June 10, 1996), affirmed by the D.C. Court of Appeals (Terry, Reid, and King, associate judges), No. 96-CV-961 (Memorandum Opinion and Judgment filed Sept. 1, 1998).
As of the filing of the complaint in the Superior Court proceedings, in October 1995, and at all times thereafter, it was unlawful under the laws of the District of Columbia for a psychiatrist to offer a professional psychiatric opinion about an individual without benefit of personal examination as is strongly recommended by the American Psychiatric Association's Principles of Medical Ethics. The D.C. Code in its latest revision makes it unlawful for a physician to "[fail] to conform to standards of acceptable conduct and prevailing practice within a health profession." See D.C. Code 2-3305.14(26). This provision was added to the District of Columbia Health Occupations Revision Act by D.C. Law 10-247, enacted on March 23, 1995. The Court of Appeals expressly found that the professional psychiatric opinion offered by the psychiatrist to the employer amounted to the diagnosis of a "disorder." See No. 96-CV-961 at 4.
The District of Columbia Superior Court as well as the Court of Appeals did not find that the action of my Akin Gump supervisor in stating to employees that she feared that I might have had plans to kill her, and the action of the supervisor in arranging to have her office secured against such a homicidal assault, see record on appeal at 41, was invidiously motivated. The supervisor (Robertson) is designated by the employer as one of the three decisionmakers who terminated my employment, see record on appeal at 167, which termination decision was based in part on the above-referenced psychiatric evidence that tended to show that I posed a risk of violence. Robertson's termination decision was made in consultation with Dennis M. Race, Esq., a senior Akin Gump partner, see record on appeal at 138 and 167.
Mr. Race has expressly affirmed, under penalty of D.C. Code 1-2529 (D.C. Human Rights Act of 1977: false documents or testimony), that (unspecified) acts of "violence," see record on appeal at 140, that I committed during my tenure at the firm coupled with the firm's reasonable fear that my future conduct might expose the firm to tort liability, see record on appeal at 148 (possibly including tort damages for wrongful death, cf. record on appeal at 41), justified the firm's decision to terminate my employment.
The District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel expressly affirmed to the D.C. Superior Court and to the Court of Appeals in pleadings filed in the above-referenced proceedings, relying on legally-irrelevant "after-acquired" evidence, see McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., 115 S.Ct. 879, 885 (1995), that my coworkers had formed genuine fears (i.e., not motivated by discriminatory animus) that I might have been armed and dangerous and poised to carry out a homicidal assault on the firm's premises. See Brief of Appellee District of Columbia Department of Human Rights and Minority Business Development at 9, Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, D.C. Court of Appeals No. 96-CV-961 (citing record on appeal at 276). The District implicitly asserted that my coworkers' concerns about my potential for armed violence were relevant to the employer's decision to terminate my employment.
I stand by the "Statement of Gary Freedman to the Office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Regarding Intent to Commit Crime of Violence as Determined by the Law Firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld," ("Statement to the U.S. Attorney") dated April 24, 1995, and made under penalty of criminal sanctions (D.C. Code 22-2514).
I want to advise, however, that representations made by the District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel (M. Justin Draycott, Esq.) to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals at oral argument in December 1997 that I "admitted" in pleadings that I filed with the D.C. Department of Human Rights that my "coworkers" were genuinely "afraid" of me (specifically with regard to my potential for armed violence or homicide) conflict with the prior Statement to the U.S. Attorney, and that said conflict may give rise to the appearance that the exculpatory representations that I made in the Statement to the U.S. Attorney were misleading, knowingly false, or perjurious.
Additionally, the Court of Appeals has affirmed, see D.C. No. 96-CV-961 at 3 n. 1, that the Department of Human Rights had legally-valid concerns that a document I submitted to the agency (which purports to have been written by the psychiatrist consulted by Akin Gump) may have been inauthentic (i.e., forged or fabricated), see record on appeal at 8. Presumably, according to the agency, I submitted the possibly inauthentic document in order to deny forensic psychiatric evidence filed by Akin Gump with the agency: forensic psychiatric evidence that related to my mental health (specifically relating to a psychiatric "disorder" that my employer had attributed to me, see D.C. No. 96-CV-961 at 4) and stability (specifically relating to my potential for violence). But see Namerdy v. Generalcar, 217 A.2d 109, 111-112 (D.C. 1966) (circumstantial evidence, such as evidence that a letter is written on the author's letterhead, is sufficient for authentication).
The enclosed computer disc contains a copy of the pleadings I filed in the above-referenced appeal together with a document submission that I made to the Federal Protective Service (Jerry McGill, S.A.) under cover letter dated Sept. 8, 1997 under compulsion of a criminal investigation.
Robert Chapman, Esq., Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, is familiar with this matter. The telephone number of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington is (202) 514-7566.
I am confident that defamatory statements about me that may raise substantial concerns about my mental stability and fitness as an employee of George Magazine, even acts of defamation committed by the law partners of a close friend of the President of the United States (Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq.) and acts of defamation committed by the current chief White House counsel to President Clinton (Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq.), will in no way impair my chances for fair consideration for employment by your publication.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: U.S. Secret Service (Marzano Lee, S.A.) (telephone no. 202 435 5100)
__________________________________________________
A phrase in my book Significant Moments is a memorial to John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his father, the President. "A View From The Shore" by Lance Morrow was a Time Magazine piece written about Mr. Kennedy Jr. shortly after his death in 1999; "with a curiosity and awe" describes U.S. Senate colleagues' reaction to the newly-elected Senator John Kennedy in January 1953.
Of late, the effects of his personality had begun to dawn upon the young man. He became aware of his attraction for those below him, and gradually, belatedly, of how he affected those above him. And when he looked back from his new standpoint of awareness to his boyhood he found both lines running through his life and shaping it. Classmates and younger boys had always courted him; superiors had . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . with a curiosity and awe . . .
Lance Morrow, A View from the Shore.
. . . taken benevolent note of him. There had been exceptions, such as Headmaster Zbinden; but on the other hand he had been recipient of such distinctions as the patronage of the Music Master, and latterly of Dubois and the Magister Ludi. It was all perfectly plain, in spite of which Knecht had never been willing to see it and accept it in its entirety. Obviously his fate was to enter the elite everywhere, to find admiring friends and highly placed patrons. It happened of its own accord without his trying. Obviously he would not be allowed to settle down in the shadows at the base of the hierarchy; he must move steadily toward its apex, approach the bright light at the top. He would not be a subordinate or an independent scholar; he would be a master. That he grasped this later than others in a similar position gave him that indescribable extra magic, that note of innocence.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
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