Inherit the mint; how Edward Bennett Williams made legal prostitution respectable - excerpt from 'The Man to See: Edward Bennett Williams - Legendary Trial Lawyer, Ultimate Insider

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1991 by Evan Thomas

As he almost did in a federal case, Williams planned to put Connally on the stand to testify in his own defense. He was determined that Connally would be well prepared--better prepared than Bobby Baker. Williams faced a difficult task. Connally, was arrogant. He also had left a trail of contradictions in the grand jury room. In order to repair the damage he had done before the grand jury, Connally had to be carefully coached. Because the basic question--Did Connally take the payoff?--boiled down to Connally's word against Jacobsen's, Williams did not have to cook up an imaginative new theory of the case, as he did for Jimmy Hoffa, who had been filmed by the FBI taking a bribe. But he did want to make sure that Connally would not get tripped up by small factual inconsistencies. Bobby Baker had been ruined by his petty lies on the stand. Williams was determined that Connally would not suffer from the same sloppiness.

Four hours, Williams and his associates worked over Connally in William's conference room. (Mike Tigar, with typical mock-heroic swagger, had renamed the blue-walled chamber "the Situation Room" to convey a more warlike atmosphere.) No fact was too small or seemingly insignificant to go unmassaged. Aided by Tigar, who had returned to the firm in 1974 specifically to help on the Connally case, Williams collected every call slip, every phone bill, every bank statement, every scrap of evidence that the prosecutors could possibly use to catch Connally in a lie. In the Situation Room, Williams played prosecutor, setting small traps for the witness. Connally had tol the grand jury that he had met with Jacobsen at five o'clock in the afternoon one day at the Sheraton Crest in Austin, Texas. But a hotel waiter had told the prosecutors that he had served Connally and Jacobsen breakfast. Remembering how Bill Bittman had made Bobby Baker squirm by placing him in Las Vegas on a night Baker had said he was in Los Angeles, Williams bore into Connally about this seemingly minor inconsistency. Williams was earthy with Connally. "Remember when that shine came into your hotel room with the poached eggs? Right now that shine has got it--he's got you!" Williams put himself right in Connally's face, demanding an answer. Connally sputtered that he couldn't remember any damn waiter. No! said Williams. You can't just say you don't remember. It will seem like you're being evasive, that you're hiding something. You have to be positive, he told Connally. His client got the message. "Yes, I do remember that waiter," the defendant replied, with a pleasant smile. "Such a nice man. You know that, now that I think about it, I do recall. . . ."

Muzzling the millionaire

Williams intentionally tried to provoke Connally, to get him to lash back. At times he used Richard Keeton, a lawyer in Connally's firm, to play prosecutor, asking needling questions that irritated Connally. "Why did you hang around with sleazebags?" Keeton would demand. Jut-jawed and upright, Connally was full of righteous indignation about his predicament. He continued to feel that he was the victim of Watergate morality, that the rules had changed on him after the fact to make criminal what was once merely business as usual--at least in Texas. "To be accused of taking a goddamned $10,000 bribe offended me beyond all reason," Connaly later protested. Among cynics in the firm, there was a sneaking suspicion that Connally's indignation stemmed from the fact that he had been indicted for taking such a small payoff. The joke around the firm was that if the bribe had been $200,000, Williams would have believed the government, since, in Texas politics, $10,000 was a mere tip.