On Doing Your Own Investigation: Philip A. Lacovara -- Watergate Prosecutor

As Counsel to Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Philip A. Lacovara rose to prominence at the age of 30 when he successfully pled his office's case for the so-called Nixon Tapes—secret White House recordings of conversations that would finally prove President Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up.

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

Phillip A. Lacovara
Mayer, Brown & Platt
2000 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006-1885

RE: Mayer, Brown & Platt Employment Inquiry - Homicide/Violence Risk

Dear Mr. Lacovara:

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) (name of state court judge redacted at the implicit direction of the Justice Department). 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.

In early fall 1992, approximately one year after my job termination by Akin Gump, I submitted an employment inquiry to Mayer, Brown & Platt as evidenced by the enclosed response dated September 28, 1992 signed by Director of Administration, Mary C. Paynter. I do not know what communications, if any, Mary C. Paynter may have had with Akin Gump's attorney managers or supervisors at the time of this employment inquiry.

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 counsel Mary C. Paynter to candidly disclose to federal authorities the content of any communications she may have had with any senior Akin Gump supervisors or attorney managers, including Dennis M. Race, Esq. (whom I expressly designated as a job reference in the employment inquiry to Mayer, Brown & Platt), 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.

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