Open Letter To Prof. Laurence H. Tribe (Harvard Law School) -- Is Laurence Tribe Concealing Knowledge of a Felony?

Professor Laurence H. Tribe
Harvard Law School

Professor Tribe:

I strongly urge you to speak to the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning the following matters. If you have any information that could help the Bureau investigate the criminal conduct of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, see Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, D.C.C.A. no. 96-CV-961 (Sept. 1, 1998), you have a legal duty and an ethical duty as a lawyer to disclose that information to federal law enforcement.  You currently serve as a consultant to the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld as well as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The D.C. Office of Corporation Counsel (acting through Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq., Jo Anne Robinson, Esq., Charles L. Reischel, Esq., William J. Earl, Esq. and M. Justin Draycott, Esq.) took the position before the D.C. Superior Court in 1996 and again before the D.C. Court of Appeals in 1997 that my belief that Akin Gump's managers (a class of persons that included Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq., Robert S. Strauss, Esq., Malcolm Lassman, Esq., Laurence J. Hoffman, Esq., Joel Jankowsky, Esq. and Richard L. Wyatt, Jr., Esq.) engaged in, or approved the commission of, criminal acts, specifically, approving the break-in of my residence in January 1990 and conspiring to solicit confidential mental health information from my treating psychiatrists in violation of the D.C. Mental Health Information Act of 1978 (from 1989 through 1991) -- acts that in their entirety might constitute the crime of racketeering under federal law -- was genuine. Brief of Appellee District of Columbia, Freedman v. D.C. Dept. Human Rights, D.C.C.A. no. 96-CV-961 (Sept. 1, 1998). Neither Strauss, Jordan, Wyatt, Jankowsky, Race, Lassman, managing partner Hoffman nor any Akin Gump manager disputed the D.C. Corporation Counsel's position or questioned its legal or factual relevance.

The D.C. Court of Appeals determined that a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., now deceased) at GW offered a professional psychiatric opinion about me to Malcolm Lassman, Esq. and Dennis M. Race, Esq. in late October 1991. The U.S. Social Security Administration relied in 1993 on Mr. Race's sworn declaration about that psychiatric opinion to grant a fraudulent claim of disability insurance. Dr. Ticho's act of providing a professional psychiatric opinion about an (unnamed) individual without benefit of personal examination was a violation of the American Psychiatric Association's Code of Professional Ethics. See Goldwater v. Ginzburg, 396 U.S. 1049 (1970) (the APA's so-called Goldwater Rule prohibits a psychiatrist from offering a professional psychiatric opinion without benefit of personal examination). Information obtained by Akin Gump via Dr. Ticho's violation of the Goldwater Rule was used by Akin Gump's attorney managers to defraud the D.C. Department of Human Rights (1992 and 1993), the D.C. Superior Court (1996), the D.C. Court of Appeals (1997), the D.C. Corporation Counsel (1996 and 1997), and the U.S. Social Security Administration (1993).

--  You were reprimanded by the Dean of Harvard Law School for having committed an act involving moral turpitude: plagiarism.  In 2004, you admitted to plagiarism after reports surfaced that material published by you in 1985 was lifted from material originally published by Henry J. Abraham in 1974.   Six months later, after an investigation headed by former Harvard President Derek Bok, Harvard President Lawrence Summers and then Law School Dean Elena Kagan reprimanded you for "a significant lapse in proper academic practice" (although they found your plagiarism to be unintentional).  Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law, criticized Summers' and Kagan's statement, saying "Harvard University is now probably the only school in the country with a University Professor who is an admitted plagiarist."

--You represented former Vice President Al Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court in the year 2000 in Gore v. Bush, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).  Vice-President Gore is a friend and protege of Akin Gump senior counsel Vernon E. Jordan, Esq.

-- Your brother is the psychiatrist Alexander Tribe, M.D.

-- One of your former law students was President Barack Obama, who is a personal friend of U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. and senior Akin Gump counsel, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.

Gary Freedman
Washington, DC