Letter to FBI: Contemporaneous Notes Regarding Job Termination

February 3, 1995
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW
#136
Washington, DC  20008

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington Field Office

RE: Freedman v. Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld

Dear Sir:

Enclosed is additional documentation regarding the above-referenced matter.

The document is four pages of handwritten notes that I prepared and placed on a table in my apartment at 3801 Connecticut Avenue on the morning of Friday October 25, 1991 under the influence of my paranoid belief that the apartment manager, Elaine Wranik, routinely entered my apartment and reported her findings back to my employer.  It was the previous morning, Thursday October 24, 1991, that I met with two attorney managers at Akin Gump, Dennis M. Race and Malcolm Lassman, to offer a complaint of harassment (I have previously submitted two pages of the notes to the U.S. Social Security Administration in connection with my disability claim.)

Though at first glance the notes tend to suggest only that I suffered from a disturbed mental state, closer examination reveals that the notes tend to prove certain objective facts.

First, the notes establish that Dennis Race knew--indeed, he even clarified--the exact location of my office on the ninth floor of Akin Gump’s offices: “Mr. Race’s references to the fact that my office on the 9th floor was across from recruiting.”  See enclosed notes at page 3.  As you will recall Dennis Race was chairman of the Hiring Committee and, presumably, therefore, was intimately familiar with the layout of the ninth floor attorney recruiting office.  Thus, Dennis Race had to have known that there was something factually questionable about the assertion of my supervisor, Mrs. Christine Robertson, that she had placed me in a private office on the 9th floor for a period of a few months: “I arranged for him to have an office on the 9th floor by himself.”  See Akin Gump Response at Attachment D (memo from Chris Robertson to Dennis Race dated October 25, 1991 re: Gary Freedman).  In fact, I never requested nor was I ever placed in a private office on the 9th floor.  And I think we can conclude that Dennis Race probably knew that.  And I think we can conclude that Dennis Race probably knew that he was deceiving the D.C. Department of Human Rights by including the Christine Robertson memo in the firm’s Response to the agency’s document request.

Second, Akin Gump, in its Response to my discrimination complaint filed with the D.C. Department of Human Rights states that my complaint of harassment to Dennis Race and Malcolm Lassman on the morning of October 24, 1991 was obviously insubstantial and manifestly suggestive that I suffered from a serious mental disturbance.  Perhaps the enclosed notes are consistent with a severely disturbed mental state.  But, perhaps, the notes are consistent with something else: namely, that both Dennis Race and Malcolm Lassman conveyed the impression that they took my complaint seriously, that they asked detailed questions about my report, that they gave no indication whatsoever that they thought I appeared disturbed, and that the notes reflect a kind of arrogant self-assurance on my part that the firm’s managers were going to take some positive action.

If Akin Gump’s managers had been apprised by Elaine Wranik of the existence of the enclosed notes, might the notes not help explain the seeming sudden change in Dennis Race’s attitude toward me in the period immediately following my meeting with him and Malcolm Lassman on October 24, 1991.  Enclosed is a letter I transmitted to my sister, Mrs. Estelle Jacobson, on September 26, 1992 detailing the events at the time of my job termination.  The letter to my sister discusses what appeared to be a sudden shift in Dennis Race’s attitude in the period after my meeting with him on October 24, 1991.

(Note that the enclosed letter to my sister, dated September 26, 1992, was written before I received Akin Gump’s Response, on December 22, 1992.  It was by way of Akin Gump’s Response that I learned for the first time that Akin Gump would be defending its termination decision on the grounds that I suffered from a mental disturbance; at the termination meeting, on October 29, 1991, Dennis Race had simply told me that there appeared to be a “lack of fit” between me and other firm personnel and that my work was of poor quality.)

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman