Letter to a Former Watergate Prosecutor

January 7, 1997
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530

Richard Ben-Veniste, Esq.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Washington, DC 20036

RE: Weil, Gotshal & Manges Employment Inquiry - Homicide/Violence Risk

Dear Mr. Ben-Veniste:

During the period March 1988 to October 1991 I was employed as a legal assistant at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld ("Akin Gump"). Attorney managers at Akin Gump terminated my employment effective October 29, 1991 upon determining, in consultation with a psychiatrist, that a complaint of harassment I had lodged against several co-workers was attributable to a psychiatric symptom ("ideas of reference") prominent in the psychotic disorders and typically associated with a risk of violent behavior. See Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, D.C. Superior Court no. MPA 95-14 (final order issued June 10, 1996). In the period immediately after my job termination senior Akin Gump managers determined that it was advisable to secure the office of my direct supervisor against a possible homicidal assault, which it was feared I might commit.

During the summer of 1992, within one year after my job termination by Akin Gump, I submitted employment inquiries to a number of law firms in Washington; Weil, Gotshal & Manges ("Weil Gotshal") may have been one such firm, although my (now possibly incomplete) records do not so indicate. If I did forward a job inquiry to Weil Gotshal I do not know what communications, if any, Weil Gotshal's administrative staff may have had with Akin Gump's attorney managers or supervisors.

I have been under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential security risk to President William J. Clinton, and was interrogated at the Washington Field Office by Special Agent Philip C. Leadroot as recently as February 1996.

I request that you look into whether Weil Gotshal's administrative staff can recall having received a job inquiry from me in 1992 and, if so, that you counsel the staff to candidly disclose to federal authorities the content of any communications Weil Gotshal may have had with any senior Akin Gump supervisors or attorney managers, including Dennis M. Race, Esq. (whom I would have expressly designated as a job reference in any employment inquiry to Weil Gotshal), relating to the subject matter of my job termination by Akin Gump, including facts relating to the firm's alleged determination that I suffered from a paranoid mental state that rendered me potentially violent, or facts relating to the firm's concerns that I might have been armed and homicidal and possibly poised to carry out a homicidal assault on the firm's premises.

I believe that the present inquiry is justified by the fact that Weil Gotshal and Akin Gump have had a close professional relationship--the two firms engaged in (unsuccessful) merger negotiations in 1989--and that any disclosures made by Akin Gump to Weil Gotshal concerning my employment history at Akin Gump may, therefore, have been unusually candid.

The enclosed computer disc contains a document I prepared that details a collection of my fantasies (certain of which relate to former President Richard M. Nixon and the so-called Watergate matter), termed by the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry the product of a psychotic mental state. Rest assured, I have provided a copy of the document to federal authorities.
Sincerely,

Gary Freedman