Akin Gump's Ties to the George Washington University

1.  Randy L. Levine is Senior Counsel in the New York City office of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. He also sits on the Board of Trustees of The George Washington University.

2.  Heather S. Foley sits on the Board of Trustees of The George Washington University.  She is married to Thomas S. Foley, former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives and retired Akin Gump partner.

Mr. Foley is from Spokane, Washington.  He taught law at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, where I spent my first year of law school (finishing in the top 15%).  Mr. Foley is a personal friend of Akin Gump founding partner, Robert S. Strauss.

3.  Bob Strauss has served on the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine of The George Washington University.

I was a psychiatry out-patient at the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry from 1992 to 1996, where I was diagnosed in September 1992 with bipolar disorder (Napoleon Cuenco, MD and Suzanne Pitts, MD).   The illness went into spontaneous remission some time in 1993.  Dimitrios Georgopoulos, MD diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia in 1996.  William Fabian, Ph.D. diagnosed me with delusional disorder in May 1994 on the basis of comprehensive psychological testing that failed to disclose any mental illness or psychotic thought process.  I took the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in March 1996 (one month after Dr. Georgopoulos diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia), administered by Ramin Mojtabai, MD; I scored the lowest meaningful score -- 6 nonperseverative errors.  (Less than 6 errors is pure chance).  The test report states that I have high concept-formation ability.

My employment was terminated by Akin Gump on October 29, 1991.  The employer claims that it learned in an ex parte consultation with George Washington University Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Gertrude R. Ticho, MD (deceased), that a harassment complaint I had lodged against coworkers was symptomatic of "ideas of reference," which might dispose me to become violent.   Gertrude Ticho's husband, the late psychoanalyst Ernst Ticho, Ph.D. was the mentor of Otto Kernberg, MD.

Dr. Otto Kernberg is an expert in organizational process and disturbed organizations.

Incidentally, Dr. Kernberg's daughter, Adine Kernberg-Vara, Esq. is a personal friend of Columbia Law Professor Jane Ginsburg, daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a neighbor of Bob Strauss at The Watergate.  Adine Kernberg-Vara and Jane Ginsburg coauthored a book several years ago.  (A few years years ago I sent Justice Ginsburg a copy of my book, Significant Moments.)

Dr. Kernberg's late wife, Paulina Kernberg, MD, was the Justice Department's psychiatric consultant in the Elian Gonzalez immigration case from the late 1990s (while current U.S. Attorney General Holder served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration).