Judge Newsome Today is April and I am in

Judge Newsome-It’s November l9th, 1996, and I’m here with Don Edwards in his apartment at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Don, I’d like to start off by asking you your date and place of birth. Don Edwards-January 6, 1915, San Jose, California. N-And what did your father do there? E-My father was the President and part owner of the San Jose Abstract & Title Insurance Co., a company started by his father in the last century. N-And had he been there all his life? E-He was born in San Jose, and he attended San Jose High School, Santa Clara High School, and a few months at Stanford University. N-Was your mother employed outside the home? E-No, my mother was a school teacher when my father married her, but then she was a housewife and raised three children. N-So you had two siblings. Were they E-Yes, I have, I still have a sister who is 85 years old. She is living in San Jose. And I had a brother, Tom Edwards, who was killed in an auto accident in 1938. N-What was San Jose like back in those days? What do you remember best about it growing up? E-Well, it was a different generation. It was about, it’s a million people now, it was about 57,000 people, maybe fewer, all white of course. At San Jose High School we had one AfricanAmerican, George Adams, he was the only one. Very few Hispanics. It was a very quiet city surrounded by the most beautiful orchards in the world of apricots and prunes and peaches and vegetable fields. It was small town America, really at its very best in so far as living there. We 1 lived a very hum drum, peaceful life, but it was fun. N-Who was the greatest influence on you in your early years? E-Well, I sort of wasted my early years by just playing golf all the time and all through high school. And I hate to say, through college I played golf every afternoon. N-It doesn’t sound like such a waste of time to me. E-Well, it was helpful, I suppose, because it gave me a feeling of doing something and winning and a certain amount of prestige I suppose because I got used to seeing my name in the paper anyway, and that was comforting although the socialization was very poor. Your vocabulary when you played golf and especially championship golf consists of half a dozen sentences “You’re way out of bounds,” “Good shot,” “Bad shot,” “You’re next.” So it was exciting. I have a lot of memories of golf tournaments all over the country. N-Where did you go to high school in San Jose? E-I went to San Jose High School. It was the only high school in San Jose, and there was a Jesuit high school, Bellarmine, which is still there. A very fine school. But San Jose High was near my home, and although when I was 13 we moved to the country, out near the San Jose golf course, and I would take a street car. Then I had a car when I was 14 because, you know, it was pretty safe in those days, and you could get a license when you were 14 in California. San Jose High School was a good high school. We had homework every night. Of course everybody was so well-mannered. We had noon dances once a week. It was really, almost out of an old movie, it was so peaceful and I don’t ever remember anybody getting pregnant. As a matter of fact I didn’t know any girls that were wild and crazy. N-Did the Depression have any effect on you or your family? 2 E-The Depression had a terrible effect on everybody, but hardly touched us because my father’s business kept pooping along at a modest rate, and he was a good manager. He just sort of protected us. As a matter of fact, shielded us from the Depression. We didn’t know about the veterans selling apples in the street, and the poor house out at Agnew and all the things that were going on. N-Agnew is a place in San Jose? E-In San Jose. It was the insane asylum in those days, and it had a poor house out there too for destitute people. We had very little institutional food stamps or anything like that. Didn’t have anything like that. So it was a desperate time, but I was shielded from it. Sometimes I regret that I was because it made me less sensitive to the despair and plight of other people. N- Were you cognizant of any of your neighbors or friends being affected by it? E-No, I don’t think so. I think I was, we had an armor around us including the Christian Science Church in which my parents were very active. A very shielded life. N-What was the ethnic background of your family? E-Scotch-Irish, and English. On my father’s side, the Philohaven (?) came from New England in the Gold Rush and went to Gold Lake and apparently made some money and ended up with two lots in downtown San Francisco. We’ve never been able to find those lots. I always suspect that the Palace Hotel is on one, and the Fairmont on the other. N-Oh, my. E-But we, like most gold miners, he died destitute. And my mother’s family came from England and northern Ireland. Both sides were Protestant. N-And you grew up as a Christian Scientist? 3 E-I grew up as a Christian Scientist, yes. N-Did that have any E-Although my brother and I always had doubts about it, but we kept it as our secret. N-Did that have any impact upon you, your development as you were growing up, do you think? E-I think it removed us from the real world because Mary Baker Eddy had the answer to everything in one book, “Science and Health.” The conversation in my family was around religion, which my brother and I found rather boring. N-Now you graduated from high school, when, about E-l932. N-What happened after that? E-Well, I went to Stanford. N-What made you decide to go to Stanford? E-The whole family had gone to Stanford. My father, my brother, my sister, and we just, it was just a natural thing to do. N-Was there something that made you decide to go to college in the first place? Did you want to go to college? E-I knew I should. Yes, I guess I wanted to go. I wanted to go and become a lawyer some day. N-Did you live at Stanford? E-Well, it was one of the major mistakes of my life. I lived at Stanford except I came home every weekend because it was only l5 or l8 miles and I had a car and so I missed an awful lot of college life, and I missed the socialization that I would have had if I had gone east or to the midwest to college. I’ve always regretted that. I didn’t have the real kind of college life that I think 4 kids are entitled to if they can afford it. N- You never considered going to school any place else than Stanford, is that basically it? E-Never did. Nobody ever even thought about it. You know in those days on the west coast people really didn’t go east very much. They might have gone to Menlo School which was 20 miles away or a school in southern California. They didn’t go to Asia and they didn’t go east. You just didn’t know anybody in your class that would go to Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. N-What stands out about your career at Stanford? What academically, first of all? E-I was a pretty good student. N-When you say “pretty good,” how good is that? E-B’s, some, a couple of C’s, it was very easy. It would have been very difficult to flunk out. It was during the Depression, they were so glad to have our money that, and it was a rather uninspired place insofar as I was concerned. None of the professors sat down and talked to you. Or had you to tea or anything like that. I lived in at a fraternity, Delta DKE House, and it was kind of removed, too. In retrospect I am not very much in favor of fraternities or sororities. N-The DKE House, you’re going to have to spell that, it’s Delta what? E-Delta Kappa Epsilon N-O.K. E-DKE N-Did you have any particular honors or recognition at Stanford? E-No, I had some luck in writing a few, a couple of short stories. N-Were they published? E-No. They really weren’t that good. In fact, I don’t know what happened to them. Then mostly 5 being a scratcher, one handicap golfer, that was my career. N-And you were on Stanford’s golf team? E-I was Captain of Stanford’s Golf Team as a junior and senior. It was a good team. We had Lawson Little as one of our members. N-Oh, really. E- And Spec Stewart N-Spec? E-Yea. He was from New Mexico. He was southwestern champion. Of course Lawson Little was one of the world’s great golfers, U.S. Open, British Open, British Amateur champion, he was a great golfer. N-And who would you have been playing as a part of the Stanford Golf Team at that time? E-Well, of course we played the other colleges, USC and Berkeley, but most, and we played the National Intercollegiate one time in Chicago, another time in Washington, D.C., actually at Congressional here. The team did have enough money because we had a good football team. We practically never lost a game of football, not like today. When I was there we went to the Rose Bowl three years in a row and so that gave the golf team enough money to travel. N-If you were the Captain of the team and Lawson Little as second, third, or fourth position, it must have been quite a golf team? Lawson Little of course went on to be a very famous pro in his own right. E-Yea, it was a good team. Lawson was better than I, but I managed to play with him. I would beat him sometimes, and he would beat me sometimes. N-So you were playing basically at par or around par golf most of the time? 6 E-All the time. N-And did you ever win the National Championships? E-No. I won the Northern California Championship. I was semi-finalist in the Western Amateur. I qualified several times for the U.S. Amateur, traveled back east and played in it, but I was never first rank. N-You, what was the closest you came to winning the U.S. Amateur? E-Second round. N-Well, when did you decide that you wanted to go to law school? You did eventually go to law school, is that right? E-I was graduated from Stanford in 1936, in English and history, history chiefly. Wrote a couple of thesis and went right into Stanford Law School. I was a very naive young man because I had lived such a protected life. I made it through law school all right, but N-What made you decide to go? E-It was just understood that I was going to go to law school, and then probably my brother by then had left Stanford and was working for my father in the San Jose Abstract & Title Insurance Co. and it was family dogma that I would be the lawyer, practicing law in San Jose, and get business and help the title insurance company in its work. N-So, it was primarily your father then who would have been most influential in your decision to go to law school, I guess? E-I suppose so. N-What professors stand out in your mind from your time at Stanford Law School? E-Oh, we had some good professors. The, I guess, there was a Professor Cathcart, Lewiston, 7 we’re talking about a long time ago. N-I understand. E-It was very, not very practical, it was all law, and incidentally we’ll get to it, I didn’t go the third year, I started the third year and then for reasons my brother being killed in an auto accident and I wanted to go to work, I was married, and so forth. I didn’t go the third year although I stayed out and studied at home and passed the Bar later on. The law school in those days, we didn’t have any other courses at all, at least I didn’t know they were available, in my first two years. You had a whole year of Corporations, you had a whole year of Contracts, that’s three quarters we had. But it was a good foundation, which you memorized all the way through. No, I didn’t take bankruptcy. N-Was it offered? E-No, not to my knowledge. N-Well, Stanford was one of the maybe two or three law schools in the whole state at that time wasn’t it? E-Yes, it was. There weren’t any others. N-Cal, did Cal have a law school? E-Yes. Cal had Boalt Hall. N-I guess it would have been the University of Southern California would have had a law school, is that right? E-USC had one. And I suppose UCLA had one, I don’t know. I don’t remember whether San Francisco, USF had one or not. N-You mentioned that you dropped out of school after your second year of law school, is that 8 right? E-Yes. I started my third year, and my wife and I rented a house. We were newlyweds in Palo Alto. My brother was suddenly killed in an auto accident. I consulted my father and he said it was all right, and so I dropped out and went to work for him, taking over my brother’s job. But I did study very hard for the next year or so at home and passed the Bar successfully, but I didn’t want to waste it. Nobody has ever asked me, did you go to law school and get your LLB. I didn’t get it. N-I see. But you were able to take the Bar. I guess back then you didn’t have to have an LLB to take it, did you? E-No. N-What was, well, I guess your first job after law school then was working for your father, is that right? E-Right. N-What happened after that? How long did you work for him? E-I worked for him until the storm clouds were gathering. Adolph Hitler was rising, it was uneasy. I started to get a little bored, and so I applied to the FBI and became an FBI Agent. N-And when would that have been? E-1939. And my wife and I went to Washington in early 1940. We lived in Washington while I attended FBI training school. I was then assigned to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We drove to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where we had a baby who is today Judge Leonard Edwards of the Superior Court in San Jose. After nearly a year there I was transferred to the New York Office. These were promotions because the New York Office was the elite place to go. That’s where all 9 the spies were and all the hot stuff. I stayed in New York. We stayed in New York very happily, until we got tired of the FBI. It’s pretty boring after a while. My father offered me a good job, a very good job at more money, and we decided to go to California. This is ‘4l, so we started to drive back. We stopped at Kentucky at my wife’s father and mother’s home in Lexington. That Sunday morning we woke up, and it was Pearl Harbor. I wired the FBI to see if they wanted me back, and Mr. Hoover wired back and said they never accepted the return of an agent who has voluntarily left. So we went on to San Jose, where I applied for and joined the Navy. N-Well, before we get to your Navy experience, do you recall any of the cases you worked on? E-Well, yes, we were doing pre-World War II work, keeping an eye in Grand Rapids on the Germans that were there and the picnics and we would keep them sort of under surveillance and there were no Japanese-Americans around, that was done mostly in Los Angeles and New York. N-Was there some particular concern about the Germans in Grand Rapids or was it just the Germans? E-No, it was just a repeat of World War I where anybody with a German name or a German accent, a German culture would be suspect. It was very unfair, but Germans like anybody else do like their culture and they go to picnics, eat sauerkraut, and we just watched them, that’s all. N-What about when you were assigned to New York, what sorts of things were you doing there? E-Oh, trying to find what we called a kidnapper that never was found, in Napcap, a very famous case in Seattle, and following leads, going from house to house, and we would get little slips of papers with leads. It was pretty routine work. N-What did you know about J. Edgar Hoover at that time? E-Well, we had a lot of respect for Hoover. He was a tough guy. I remember at our graduation 10 we all got in a room and the instructors went around fixing the curtains in the room and looking at us, straightening our ties and things, and then Hoover walked in, this tough looking guy, just went up to the podium and stared down at us, and said “I just want to tell you,” he said “you get drunk or you fool around with women, out you go. Just remember that. And don’t come to me and snivel and say that you’ve got a family, that you need the money, you need the job, or you didn’t mean to do it. You’re out.” He turned on his heel and walked out. N-So much for the graduation speech. E-It wasn’t a very inspiring graduation. Would you like a cup of coffee? N-I’m fine, but whenever you’d like to break, just let me know. What made you want to get into the FBI to begin with? E-Oh, adventure, and it was a glamorous institution at that time. There were a lot of movies out about the FBI, and I was sort of a naive young person. It just sounded great, that’s all. N-Did that experience in the FBI shape your future political views at all? E-No, I’ve always been a liberal. I think I was liberal when I was two and three years old. So, it didn’t. And also, Mr. Hoover wasn’t political in those days. It was crime. At least that’s all that we knew. We didn’t know any of this ideology that he became infected with later that was so devastating to the FBI and to the country when he got on this anti-Communist, anti-Russian kick and did all the things that led to go-and-tell probe N-What was that again for the record? Go-and-tell probe? E-We’ll get into that and when I got into Congress. N-Now we’ve got you in Lexington and you called Hoover and he said no, we don’t take anybody back, and then you went back to California and enlisted in the Navy, is that right? 11 E-Well, I got a Commission. N-I see. E-They give you a Commission as Ensign and put me in Intelligence In San Francisco, at 717 Market Street, doing personnel work, going after a lieutenant commander who was selling commissions. They put me in a hotel room at the Clift Hotel in a room next to Lieutenant Commander Aroff, and one of the visitors was the actor and singer Tony Martin. They would have parties and girls, and we had it recorded. It was rudimentary in those days, but we had microphones around the room. We would sit and listen and record what they were doing. And pretty soon we were able to get an indictment for Commander Aroff and he was court marshaled at a trial on Angel Island. That kept me busy for a while. N-Do you know how to spell Aroff? E-A r o f f. N-You were basically there to spy on him, and he was having parties with this entertainer in his room, is that it? E-Well, he was a Hollywood type. He was a Hollywood plumber, and he was trying to get contracts too for his plumbing company from the Navy and the military. And then he decided he could make some money selling what he said was his influence to his associates in Hollywood, selling commissions, and they would say “I want my son to have a Commission, Maury, can you help us.?” He’d say “Yes, I can.” And they’d apply. I’m not sure he ever did much , but he had some success, and being a lieutenant commander he was able to help them get their sons’ commission. N-But he started out as a plumber in Hollywood? 12 E-Yea, he was a plumber at the studios. N-And he ended up being a lieutenant commander? E-Yea. N-So what happened to your Navy career after that? E-Well, I strongly felt after being in San Francisco, for God’s sake during the war for a year, that I wanted to be at sea. You can’t be in the Navy without going to sea, so I put an application in for what we called the Armed Guard which was the head of a gun crew, a Navy gun crew, aboard Merchant vessels. And I was accepted for a transfer. They transferred me to Gulfport, Mississippi for training and then to Shell Beach, Louisiana, for further training, and then I was assigned to a ship that was built by Henry Kaiser Co. It was a liberty ship called, named the Frank J. Sprague. He was a former Republican Governor of Oregon, S-p-r-a-g-u-e. And I went aboard this ship. It only cost a million dollars in those days. It was 10,000 tons. It was a big ship, a freighter. We set sail for a couple of trips to Vancouver, and then we set sail and went to Calcutta, India, all the way around the world. It took several months. It was a very exciting, wonderful trip. N-What do you remember best about it? E-Well, the reason that I really wanted to be in the Armed Guard was that I knew I’d have a room to myself. And I didn’t want to go with a bunch of officers on ships where I was just another pea in the pod. And I wanted to write a book so I pounded out 95,000 words on my typewriter. After all, we didn’t see land for 35 days, and the ship would go l0 or ll knots all by itself, no convoy until near the end. And I got to know the sailors, disciplined, had tough discipline. I was a good boss of the sailors but very strict. They were kind of a sad lot in many ways. They could barely 13 read and write. They were all white. N-These guys were Merchant Marine people, right? E-No, these were Navy seamen. N-Oh, these were Navy people, O.K. E-They were gobs. N-Gobs? E-I had a, they were seamen, apprentice seamen and seamen first class and I had a couple of Petty Officers who did the real management of the guns and crews. N-So you were the Commander of this ship? E-No, I was the Commander of the gun crew. There was a Merchant Captain. N-I see. E-Who had command of the ship. N-Did you write the book? E-Wrote the book, and it was somewhat autobiographical, nothing much had happened in my life, although it sounds kind of exciting, being in the FBI and all. When I finally got to New York I sent it to an agent who wrote me back, a woman agent, and said it was very good, not publishable at this moment, but to keep sending her stuff. I kept it for a few months, didn’t like it much, and gave it the deep six one day. And I haven’t written a book since then. N-How long did your duty on that ship last? E-On this ship it was about 8 months. Then I got another ship which was the Sea Pike which was a transport where we carried troops to Asia, France, and then I was at sea on the Sea Pike when- no we had gotten back and it was in San Francisco while it was being refitted that the 14 atom bomb was exploded and the War was practically over. So I got out of the Navy after a few months. Quite quickly, made it possible for us to leave. N-So at that point you would have been how old? E-Well, we’re talking about N-3l? E-33, 32, yea. N-What did you do then? E-Well, I went back to work for my father in his company as secretary and vice president. N-It must have been fairly large by that point? E-Yes, it was getting larger all the time, and that was until, we had three children, a total of three children, and then in l950 my marriage broke up and my father fired me. N-It sounds like a pretty bad year. E-It was a bad year. A lot of it was my fault. So I didn’t have a job. So I started my own company. I sort of knew how to do it from being around and for very little money. Today it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a title insurance company, but I started it with about $30,000 and within a very few years it was the biggest company in Santa Clara County with 50-60-100 employees. So I was a Title Insurance President until l962 when I ran for Congress. N-That must have bothered your father somewhat that your company somehow got to be the biggest in Santa Clara County. E-Yea, he sold out. N-He sold to you? 15 E--No, he sold it to another company. N-I see. E-We were never friends after that although we had a reconciliation as he got very old. N- Your company grew, you were the President of it, what happened at that point? Is the company still around, or did you sell out, or E-Well, I decided to run for Congress. N-What year would that have been? E-l962, l96l, actually. There had been a redistricting. Every ten years after the census they redistrict, and California got eight new seats in the House of Representatives. And one of them, part of San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, all around where I was born and brought up, known very well by a lot of people, and so I aimed at that. I put on a good campaign, and won my primary by 800 votes, had a recount, lawsuits, and things. (BREAK) N-So we had you running for Congress, but before we get into that any further, how active had you been in the Democratic Party up to that point? E-Well, I’d been a Republican until my breakup with my family in l950. And that sort of turned me off on the Republicans. I was also elected in early l950 the President of the Young Republicans of California. I didn’t realize how right wing they were and how unpleasant, and after a few months they found out that I was a member of the United World Federalists. N-The United World Federalists? E-Yes N-I’m not familiar with that organization. E-Well, it’s an organization that works with the UN. In l950 that was very radical to 16 Republicans who had never been much in favor of the UN anyway, and so I got out of the, I resigned as President of the Young Republicans of California and became a Democrat, but I wasn’t very active. I wasn’t active at all, but I was a Democrat, but I wasn’t active. N-So what made you decide to run for Congress? E-Well, I have always been interested in issues, always interested in war and peace, and the United Nations, very much concerned about the inequalities of our society and of society generally, and I just felt that I’d like to be involved in things like that, interesting things, in crime and sort of become a player. That was the best, also my business was in good shape. I had two vice-presidents who were running the Title Company just wonderfully and so I knew I could leave and I did. N-So, you won the primary. Was there a Republican or a Democratic incumbent at that point? E-No, it was a new seat. N-Oh a new seat, that’s right, O.K. Who did you beat in the primary, do you remember? E-Yes, I beat the Mayor of Fremont, John Stevenson, and the Supervisor, Frances Dunn, from Alameda County. Alameda County, I was lucky that they had a 3 person race. Because I would have lost. Santa Clara County was not, was only about a third of the population of the 9th Congressional district. And so they split the Alameda County (Side 2, Tape l) N-I think we left off with your redistricting, it must have been a huge Congressional district if it included Alameda and Santa Clara Counties. E-In those days the population explosion hadn’t really been effective, and my district ran from near Gilroy all the way to Altamont Pass, Mt. Hamilton, but it only had 400 odd thousand people 17 in it. It all depends on the people. This was after one man, one vote so they had to have the districts equal. And almost immediately it started to shrink as more people moved in. By the time I left in l994, it was a much smaller area. N-Well, Fremont, at that time must have been nothing more than a farm town, wasn’t it? E-l5-20,000 N-And now, well over l00,000. E-Yes, it’s a thriving place. N-A big place. So you won the primary. Who did you run against in the election? E-I forget. It was a Democratic district. N-I see. E-I can’t remember the Republican, but I beat him easily. N-What do you remember about the first day you set foot into the House of Representatives? E-Well, I remember, again, being very naive about where I was going and what I was going to do. We drew for offices. I drew the worst office in the Cannon Office Building. It was under the sidewalk, and I felt I could hear people walking on the sidewalk over my office. The first thing I did was to rip out a partition so that my administrative assistant and legislative director would be in my room. I found out in business you don’t want to put people in little rooms, otherwise they get into trouble, talking on the phone, and so forth. So then I had a funny little experience. Joe Poole was next door, there was a huge fat guy from Dallas, Texas. He was a freshman too, and my office wasn’t ready, it was being painted, so I moved in with him and used his office along with Joe Poole. He was very conservative, but he was a good guy. We walked over to the Capitol together on the opening day, and the big issue was with Jack Kennedy, the enlargement 18 of the Rules Committee because Judge Smith of Virginia would not let any of Kennedy’s programs out of the Rules Committee. N-Judge Smith was in Congress at that point? E-Yes, he was the Chairman of the Rules Committee. He was a conservative Democrat. He was one of the old barons. So as I, I knew we were going to have a vote that day whether to enlarge the committee as President Kennedy wanted or not and the conservatives of course, of the Democratic Party wanted to keep... So I walked over with Joe, and I knew it was going to be very close. There was a tunnel there, and Joe said “What are you going to do today?” I said “I’m going to vote on the Rules Committee enlargement.” He said “What’s that all about?” I knew that he didn’t know. I said “Well, Joe, I’m going to vote for the, with our leadership it makes sense to me. It’s democracy.” He said “Well, we’ll do that” So we did. I got in the next morning before Joe did and he went to his desk and saw a pile of telegrams, and I looked at the top one. I will never forget it. It said “Joe Poole, drop dead. Benedict Arnold was a patsy compared to you.” But he forgave me. So then I applied for the Judiciary Committee right away. It took me a couple of months to get on it. Somebody had to die. N-What made you want to be on the Judiciary Committee? E-Oh, I just liked the idea of it as a lawyer. I wanted the issues, civil rights, the Federal Court System, N-The Civil Rights Movement, of course, was right at the fore at that time, wasn’t it, or just about to become? E-It was, Kennedy was never terribly strong on it. He was writing the first Civil Rights Bill at that time, and it didn’t get enacted until ‘64. But we were going to start hearings on the Kennedy 19 Bill right away, the Judiciary Committee did. Bobby Kennedy was the Attorney General. N-What other issues were you dealing with on the Judiciary Committee at that time that stand out? E-There was always a crime bill. Actually, Randy, we were pretty obsessed with moving ahead with the Civil Rights Bill. N-Who was the Chairman of the Committee at that time, do you remember? E-Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn, New York, a great old guy. N-A Democrat? E-Democrat, yea. N-Democrats controlled the House at that time? E-Oh, yes. We had a good majority. N-So do you remember anything about hearings on the Bill? E-Yes, I remember the hearings pretty well, this was the Kennedy Bill. Bobby Kennedy was the first witness, of course, the old barons they were from South Carolina, Georgia, the former Governor of Virginia, all were on the Committee. And they were the sub-committee chairs, and they had freshmen like me, my God, I didn’t even get a chance to question the witnesses for days and days after everybody had gone. We didn’t have the five minute rule at that time. That was a reform that came later. N-And the Five Minute Rule is what? E-The Five Minute Rule is that you can only question the witness for five minutes, and then you had to move down the line. And then when you’d get to the end of the line you’d start over again. It’s a very good rule. It protects the younger members. Protects everybody. Everybody 20 gets their shot at the witness. But they made, they tried to embarrass both the Republicans and the Democrats, tried to embarrass Bobby Kennedy, and tried to catch him on points of law N-Why? Why were they trying to embarrass him? E-Well, they weren’t for the Civil Rights Bill, the old barons and certain Republicans weren’t, a couple of them were. But we had a paper thin majority of liberals on the Committee. N-Who else do you remember as a witness? E-I don’t remember any others, no. N-Did Martin Luther King ever testify? E-No, he hadn’t, no, not yet. He hadn’t gone to jail yet either. N-This would have, your term would have been an extremely eventful one in the sense that, wouldn’t you have gone through the Cuban Missile Crisis? E-No, I was just elected in ‘62 when the Missile Crisis took place. N-O.K. Of course you would have gone through the assassination of JFK, right? E-Yes, I was on the Committee and in Congress for l0 months with Kennedy, and then one day found that he had been assassinated. N-Did you ever, did you get to know him at all? E-No. When he presented the bill to Congress he invited a number of us Democrats on the Committee up to the White House, and we went up to the second floor and sat around with him for a couple of hours and talked about the bill, and he got us to commit to support the bill and so forth. But that was, and he would invite us to dances and things, but those were very impersonal Congressional issues. I didn’t know him personally. N-What was your impression of him? 21 E-Well, he certainly was charming, and he wasn’t too much in favor of, he wasn’t a hard-driving Civil Rights advocate like Lyndon Johnson was. He was embarrassed by the whole issue. Also, he was elected by the solid South, and the civil rights movement sponsored by the Democrats was destined to break up the solid South. And until it became 20-30 years later a Republican stronghold, and very hard for a Republican to get elected President now because the solid South is gone, and Kennedy knew that I’m sure. Lyndon Johnson knew it too, but he didn’t care. N-Did you mean it’s very hard for a Democrat to get elected because of the solid South or a Republican to be elected because of the solid South? E-It was very hard for a N-Now, I mean. E-Now, it’s very difficult because a Republican can generally count on the solid South. N-Right, O.K. E-In those days it was as a result of the Civil War and the slave situation and all of that, Abraham Lincoln, the South, they let them stay. The old Confederacy was solidly Democrat, as they say “Red Dog Democrats.” They would vote for a “red dog” as long as they were Democrat. N-So, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became President, and he is really the one who pushed the Civil Rights Bill through as I understand it, is that right? E-Yes, that’s correct, yes. He was absolutely determined. Some terrible things happened about that time, the three murdered civil rights workers in Mississippi, and Mrs. Liuzzo was shot. N-Mrs. Liuzzo? I’m not sure I remember that one. E-She is the woman who was shot while driving along. She was with another civil rights worker in Mississippi, and a car passed and they just shot her. And James Reed was murdered. He was 22 a Unitarian minister from Palo Alto. He was in the South registering voters. My son was registering voters in Mississippi. Leonard, he was a student at Wellesley College. It was terrible. They were bombing churches. It was a murderous, murderous period, the ‘60's, ‘62, ‘63, ‘64. So when it came time for the Lyndon Johnson Bill we just held hearings, and just went right ahead and enacted it. Had a lot of trouble with the Senate because of Strom Thurmond. I think he was very influential. He was going to filibuster and so we worked out a device with, and I can’t remember who the majority leader was in the Senate, but Lyndon Johnson knew the Senate like he knew the back of his hand and by-passed the whole Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and brought it right to the N-Would it have been Richard Russell? E-No, he was the enemy. N-Oh, I kind of figured he would have been, but he was from Georgia or Mississippi or some place like that. E-Georgia. N-Right. I can’t remember who in the Senate, was it Humphrey? E-No. N-No? Well, at any rate, in any event, you got it passed. E-We got it passed, yeah. N-And you would have been just about ready to run for reelection, I guess, at about that time. Did it have any effect upon your election campaign? Your reelection campaign? E-No, that was ‘64. No, I didn’t have any difficulty for a number of years. ‘68 was when I got into trouble with my electorate. My majority went down in ‘68. 23 N-Any particular reason? E-If you happened to be against the war in Viet Nam and being vocal about it and public about it, and my opposition to the House on Un-American Activities Committee. I led the fight against that in the House. N-Tell me about that. E-Well, I just was repulsed by what they were doing. N-Who were “they”? Do you remember the members? E-Well, it was the old Dyes Committee, but Dyes was not there anymore. I guess Richard Nixon was a member. He was a Senator by then, I guess. I don’t know, but it was an ugly, ugly committee that had wide spread support. It came to California, went to Hollywood, and devastated the careers of a lot of people. (Break in tape) I used to read their opinions and books. I appreciated that group of liberal judges, liberal justices. N-Prior to going on the record, you indicated you were friends with Justice William O. Douglas. What can you tell me about him? Do you remember any particular experiences you had with him? E-Well, yes. Well, he invited me to Santa Barbara to, the Hutchins had an organization in Santa Barbara and it was connected with the World and World Peace, so I went out there with him. When he died, his will provided that a group of his pals, half a dozen of us, were to stand at his casket all night before his funeral. And so we looked at each other, you know, what did Bill want to do this to us for? I figured he just didn’t want us out partying. They came from all over the country. So my stint was from l2 to 3, I think, and so I stood by the casket with another friend over there and wondered the whole time why Bill had done that to us. 24 N-Was he a pretty unusual man? E-Yeah, he was very unusual. He was very serious. N-I’d always heard he was very difficult. One of his law clerks said he was a very difficult man to get close to at all. E-Yeah.. He didn’t like to have assistants. He said the Judges were under-worked. They ought to write their own opinions, and they shouldn’t just use their clerk’s opinions, and so forth. He didn’t have very many, but one of them he finally did have, and he came to him one day and said “Mr. Justice, “ he said, “You’ve given me this work for tonight. You gave me this work for last night. You gave me this much work for tomorrow and Sunday, and absolutely no way without working night and day am I going to get through it.” Bill looked at him and said “That’s right.” N-Was he that tough? The other legend about him is he used to fire his law clerks regularly. E-I don’t know about that. N-How did you get close to him? I mean what. . . E-He was a lonely man. I wasn’t married to Edith at the time, but we pal’d around. My wife and I pal’d around with him and Cathleen, and we’d to to dinner and so forth. N-Well, let’s go back to, how well did you get to know Lyndon Johnson? E-Not well at all. I admired him and the way he was handling his job. He envisioned this great society. Practically everything he jammed through was these enormous majorities he had at that time. Most of it is in effect today. Medicare. We didn’t have Medicare until the Great Society Program. We certainly didn’t have food stamps, Medicaid, Federal Aid to Education, Title I, all of that, that all came in the Great Society. He wasn’t afraid to say “We shall overcome.” He wasn’t afraid to come out and say that the black Americans are very much discriminated against, 25 are in danger of their lives, they were just not going to put up with it, which is amazing for a Southerner to say things like this. And they hated him for it, but Presidents don’t say things like that anymore. They pussy foot around. We won’t get into current politics where there are code words for everything, and so forth. So I didn’t know Johnson. When he got involved in the Viet Nam War, it was very upsetting because that was his doom. He became obsessed with it. He had been on the Military Committee under the Navy Affairs Committee in the Senate and had come under the influence of the Pentagon, and I remember one time he invited us all to the White House, members of Congress. I don’t know, a hundred of us or something like that, with our wives. And so went and we sat down, and Linda Bell, or one of the daughters, took the wives off for a tour of the White House. But we were there so long that she finally ran out of time and sat them down and gave them cocktails, and a couple of the women got drunk. They weren’t used to sitting in the White House drinking. But Lyndon was there and he sat there, and we were lectured by Dean Rusk and Westmoreland I remember. And Lyndon had a drink under his chair, I remember that, and he’d say “Tell them this, Westy, tell them about this, Westy.” And I was sitting next to Patsy Mink who is an Asian, a Japanese-American from Hawaii, and General Westmoreland said, “You know Asian women get old very fast. In their 20's and 30's they get old.”. Patsy said “What do you mean?” N-What first turned you off to the war, not that obviously there was a war, and that’s bad in itself, but what made you decide that it was a “bad” war? E-I don’t know. Intellectually it just didn’t make sense. It just seemed to me that I didn’t buy this bit of domino theory. N-I think we left off with the war, and did your opposition to the war cause any problems with 26 your colleagues? E-Yes, in ‘68 it did, oh, not with my colleagues. We had quite a good group. Well, we only had a few at first. But I didn’t, nobody would speak to me about it, you know. There are rules of good behavior in the House, and we don’t criticize the other fellow’s vote. But like when I started to vote against the House Against Un-American Activities Committee there was a handful of us that voted no, and then we picked up. The same thing happened with Viet Nam, just a handful voted against the appropriations at first, and then as the mood of the country changed we got more and more votes until finally we cut off the money and that ended the war. N-Is that really the fact? E-That’s right. N-By that time you must have been a committee chairman of some sort, weren’t you, or had you risen in the ranks of the . . . E-I was probably a subcommittee chair by then. N-What other committees were you on other than the Judiciary Committee? E-The Veterans Affairs Committee. I was on that for the whole time. That’s a minor committee. It didn’t take much time. And I could have been chairman of that, but I turned it down because I would have not been able to be chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. You weren’t allowed to be chair of two legislative committees or subcommittees. N-So you became chair of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights? E-That’s right. N-About what year would that have been? E-’73, ‘74, in there, and that’s when I was assigned or appointed to the Bankruptcy Commission. 27 N-Did you ever have a chance to take a position in the Executive Branch? E-No. N-Did you ever seek or want any position? E-No, I wouldn’t like that. N-How come? E-I wouldn’t like to have a boss. I’d get in trouble with a boss. N-Did you ever seek to run for higher office? E-No. N-Never was interested in being a Senator? E-No, we don’t consider Senators any better than us. Same pay. N-I guess that is right, it is the same pay. It isn’t necessarily a higher office. E-No, we all do the same thing except that they have more constituents and more responsibility. N-You’ve mentioned Gerald Ford in connection with his efforts to impeach, and he kind of got I guess you’d call it outmaneuvered on that particular issue, but what was your impression of him generally? You must have served under him, E-You know, he was in the House with me. He was a nice guy. He was rather dumb in a lot of ways. He wasn’t much of a President either. He didn’t make waves so N-You never got to know him very well? E-No. N-What about Nixon? How much contact did you have with him? E-Well N-You would have gone through the Watergate hearings, I guess, wouldn’t you? 28 E-Oh yeah, I marched in a parade for Nixon, as President of Young Republicans of California, when he ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas. And I remember I was carrying a torch, and the torch dripped on me and ruined my coat. And my friends several years later said it served me right. I said the same to myself. As President I talked to him at a couple of parties, talked to him about Viet Nam and “You know, Mr. President, we’ve got to get out of Viet Nam.” “Oh, yes,” he said “we’re going to get out of Viet Nam.” He didn’t have any intention of it. N-Don’t you think so, he never intended to? E-Well, he intended to win. No, I don’t think so. N-Was he as utterly as unprincipled as many people have accused him of being? E-Actually he was a lot better on civil rights than Reagan was. Reagan was real cold blooded on civil rights. He never saw a bill that he approved of, and this business of level playing field and a color-blind society, all were designed to do nothing. But we got along not too badly with Nixon on civil rights and constitutional rights. His problem was he was a crook. N-So, was it a special committee or was it the Judiciary Committee that investigated, did the hearings on Watergate? E-The full Committee. N-So you were involved in all of the hearings? E-Yes. N-What do you remember about that other thanE-Oh, I could go on forever about that, you know. We, day after day, night after night, had witnesses, and listened to recordings. I know this, Randy, that we would have had a great deal of trouble in winning the trial in the Senate. The impeachment would have gone through, I think 29 through the House, but the June 23, l972 tape surfaced right after we voted impeachment. And in that particular tape, it was clear that he knew, that he admitted he knew about the burglary and was covering, actively covering up the burglary. And that’s when Chuck Wiggins and all of the other members, the Republicans left him and said “that’s it, he’s got to go.” N-Even Wiggins left him? E-Yea.h. N-Because Wiggins, as I understand it was one of the last holdouts. E-He was the last holdout. He left him that night. As a matter of fact, Edie and I were in a restaurant, Nathan’s, that night when it surfaced. We were sitting at a booth, they had booths in those days, and Jim St. Claire, the counsel to the President, was sitting in the next booth, and we could hear them talking. And St. Claire was saying “By God, Wiggins has left us, too.” He said “ They’re all just, the rats are leaving the sinking ship.” So we knew it was all over. That’s when a couple of days later he resigned. N-Well, let’s talk for just a second about bankruptcy, and when did you first develop an interest in bankruptcy law? E-I didn’t develop an interest in bankruptcy until I was elected, nominated, made a member of the Bankruptcy Commission. N-How did that come about? E-I haven’t any idea who, I don’t know who was President. N-It would have been Nixon in l970. E-Yeah. So I guess the Democrats had a couple of appointments. Senator Cook and SenatorN-Burdick 30 E-Quentin Burdick. N-Did you know either of them before you got on the Commission? E-No, but also on the Commission, they didn’t do a damn thing. I don’t think they ever showed up. As a matter of fact, we did everything. N-When you say “we,” who would that have been? E-Wiggins and I and the members of the committee, just a wonderful group of people. They inspired me and interested me in bankruptcy. N-What was your, so you don’t know how you got on the committee? E-No. N-What made you decide to take this up? You were busy with other things at the time. E-Well, I just think it’s an honor to be on a commission, I guess, and I was curious about what it would be like and what bankruptcy was all about. N-How collegial was the Commission? E-Oh, it was wonderful. It was just, those men, no women, were such gentlemen and so knowledgeable. They just educated me and Chuck Wiggins. We traveled with them to Los Angeles and Chicago. We held hearings in New York, and in talking with them I just got this keen appreciation of the importance of bankruptcy and the need for the reform. Judge Weinfeld was great, and Hugh Will of Chicago, charming guy, and he had a nice wife. I think she got very ill later. And Charlie Seligson? N-Charlie Seligson E-Charlie Seligson, he died. His wife just died. He was a wonderful man. N-What did you think of Harold Marsh? 31 E-He was a good chairman. He was tough and he was very N-Everybody says he was tough. Everyone agrees on that. E-We didn’t have any major disagreements. We all knew that, they knew and they taught me that we had to do this reform. This was the opportunity, and if it wasn’t done now, another 50 years would go by before we would get another Commission. This was the only way you could reform it because the bankruptcy laws and the code, because you couldn’t do it through committee work, too many special interests, back scratching, and so forth. N-Well, did the Commission meet very often? E-Well, we met at the hearings. N-How many hearings did you have? Do you remember? Were there a lot of hearings? E-There were a lot of hearings, yeah, 50 or 20. N-And you, and then Representative Wiggins, came to all of those, or most of them? E-Oh, we didn’t miss a one, no. N-Really? Why is it, do you think, that the Commission did not recommend an Article III Court? E-Well, they thought it was impractical. N-Weinfeld for one was very much against it. E-Yes, that’s right, we had two tenured judges there, and they were very jealous. I got it through in the House, and it came very close. And then Strom Thurmond killed it in the Senate, but the judges did it themselves. I know that when I was a floor leader in the House for when we finally got the Commission’s Bill, we turned into legislative proposal the Commission’s Report, and then I had life tenure. I just thought it was important. N-Who was it that convinced you of that? Or did you just come to that conclusion on your own? 32 E-I guess staff members, we talked about it. I had two wonderful staff lawyers, Ken Klee was the Republican lawyer, young guy, and Richard Levin. They are both very successful bankruptcy lawyers today, making a lot of money. They were my staff’s assistants, and they got along wonderfully. And when I understood the work that judges do in the courts, all the hundreds of billions of dollars that are involved, and the historical treatment of the bankruptcy judges and referees and the fact that the tenured judges, Article III judges, were a little snotty about and bullying about maintaining their role as bosses of the bankruptcy judges. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and I justN-So you were responsible for actually putting in the Article III provisions? E-Yes. N-Who else was active in the House at that time in the bankruptcy area? Who else cared? I know Hamilton Fish’s name comes up quite a bit and Caldwell Butler is another person who E-Yes, Caldwell Butler came along a little later, I think. He took Wiggins’ place. He was a good guy. I’m not sure what their position was on that, but Alan Parker was another staffer. He was maybe general counsel at that time under Peter Rodino. But I just felt it was the right thing. I still think to this day, but when it got to the Senate it was doomed. The power of the Federal Judges is rather enormous, which they don’t use. They don’t use it today in the right way. They should be more active politically. Their roles are being diminished, and their careers are in jeopardy with “three strikes and you’re out” where their hands are tied. Their discretion is done away with and mandatory minimum sentencing and all of that. It’s awful. N-You’re saying that the Federal Judiciary should become more active and involved? E-They ought to protect the responsibilities that they have. They shouldn’t allow their roles to be 33 diminished by losing as much discretion as they are losing. They just don’t have any more in criminal matters. They go in, they look at a book, and they go “this guy is going to get 20 years,” and this and this, you know. It’s really just terrible. N-When did the revision of the bankruptcy laws finally draw the attention of Congress in earnest during the ‘70's, because you know it’s not exactly a burning issue for most people, and they were lucky to have someone like you who took an interest in it, and Judge Wiggins. E-Well, the Commission did its work. N-Right. E-And did a hell of a good job, and resolved to the Commission’s satisfaction that the three or four big problems of bankruptcy at that time, the incestuous nature of the trustees, getting the U.S. Trustee, as a possibility or a trial, chapter 11, the encouragement of chapter 11 so that companies could get a fair start, a fresh start while still protecting the assets. All of that we took very seriously. And we were helping the consumer, but we felt that the consumer needed help even though sometimes the bankers felt that we were too much on the consumer’s side. As a matter of fact, we were under fire from the bankers all the time. So we issued the report and then I promptly took it to my sub-committee. N-Which was, would have been what? Was it still a constitutional subE-It was still an oddity that we had that jurisdiction. We had the jurisdiction because I was on the Commission. N-I see. E-And I didn’t lose it until several years later. So I went ahead and held hearings which was sort of a repeat of the Commission’s hearings except they were limited. We didn’t travel around as 34 much. N-But you had a lot of them, didn’t you? E-Yea, we had a lot of hearings. N-I was just with Ken Klee a couple of days ago actually. E-Well, he’s great. N-And he mentioned that you had 27 hearings and you had line-by-line mark-ups on the bills. And you were involved in all of those hearings? E-Yeah, I was chair. And so we got through the hearings. The Subcommittee voted it out, and I was the only one, Chuck and I were the only people that knew anything about bankruptcy in the Subcommittee and so our members went right along with us. They knew us, and they trusted us. And we had the Commission Report to back it up with the distinguished people. Back home they were encouraged by the lawyers and the bankruptcy judges. The bankruptcy judges were simply wonderful. They would drop into my office and we would talk, Lee of Kentucky. N-Joe Lee? E-Yeah. And I don’t know, a whole bunch of others. They would always just walk in. We would talk bankruptcy, and I learned an awful lot from them. Just an amiable, good group. So when once the committee, the subcommittee had voted to approve it, then the full committee sifted it through again. And Wiggins and I were the only ones that knew anything that was going on. They took it to the floor, and nobody paid a hell of a lot of attention except the judges. The only big issue was the life tenure, which George Danielson and Bob Kastenmeier were our enemies there. They’re good friends of mine, but they, George is on the Court of Appeals in Los Angeles now for the State of California. Bob Kastenmeier was defeated, and they felt very 35 strongly that we shouldn’t, that we shouldn’t have tenure, bankruptcy judges. So we lost that, but we lost it late at night. One night in the Senate, I was over there trying to put the arm on them to N-You won it in the House E-We won in the House, yeah.. N-And Peter Rodino was behind the bill too, wasn’t he? E-Oh, yeah, you couldn’t have done it without Peter. N-And then you went over to the Senate? E-Then the bill was considered in the Senate, and they didn’t, they gave it a slap and a dash. That’s one thing about the House. We ordinarily do better work, you know, more detailed work. We had more time. And the only big issue in the Senate was life tenure, and the judges were en mass. My phone rang off the hook with my friends on the Federal Bench in San Jose. N-The District, the Article III judges, you mean? E-Yeah, they didn’t like it at all. Not one liked it. They felt very strongly about it. (Tape 2, Side l) N- Why was Strom Thurmond so opposed to the bill? To the Article III status? E-Well, I think that he, his friends, the old timers on the bench from South Carolina just felt that way. All of the Article III judges felt that way. The bankruptcy judge didn’t have a friend in the Article III judges. Their little kingdom was being assaulted as far as they were concerned. They didn’t have their boys and girls anymore, and they felt that their prestige in the community would be damaged. And to some extent it probably would have been, but I still think it was the right thing to do. N-Well, were the judges that were calling you mainly from the Northern District of California or 36 were they from all over? The judges that were calling. E-Just the ones I knew from California. N-That would have been probably what, Bob Peckham at that point? E-Bob Peckham, God, I got Bob Peckham, you know. There was one time for a year or so that we had a Democratic president and no two Republican senators, so the California Democratic delegation took over the job of selecting new Senators, and that’s when I was able to get Peckham. He was Chief Judge of the Superior Court in San Jose. Oh yeah, Bob was very upset. N-That’s interesting. Well, what were the other most difficult issues that the Commission and the Congress had to deal with? Were exemptions something that were. . . E-Yes, we lost on exemptions. We did the best we could , but we had to bow to the states. N-You wanted a uniform set of Federal exemptions? E-Just about, yeah. We didn’t have a chance. N-What about appeals, was that a big issue? Bankruptcy appeals? E-I don’t remember that. N-To what extent was the legislative process leading to the ‘78 Code a bi-partisan effort? E-Well, it was bi-partisan chiefly because of Chuck Wiggins. He was just a fine leader, a fine man, and popular, trusted, and he guided it through. N-Who were, what groups were most involved? The National Bankruptcy Conference, I guess, was one of the groups. E-Yes, they were great. N-Do you remember any of the particular people from that group? Larry King or. . . E-I remember Larry King, of course. 37 N-I haven’t asked you about Frank Kennedy. E-Yeah, Frank Kennedy was there, and he was. . . N-He was the recorder for the Commission, as well. E-That’s right, but he sort of guided the Commission on a daily basis. He knew a lot about bankruptcy and he was a first class guy. Larry King, we counted on him for advice in the subcommittee. He was our witness, and I’d pick up the phone and talk to him, and he would come to Washington. I’d sit down with him. N-Was the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, they, of course, through Joe Lee, I guess, was very much involved as well? E-Yes, very much involved, very helpful. N-Were there any, and you said the bankers were always involved, I guess, in the. . . E-They weren’t too well organized, but they would complain that they were being taken advantage of, that we weren’t doing anything about credit cards, that we weren’t doing anything about this and that. They didn’t like any of the exemptions. As a matter of fact, I opposed an awful lot of the things they suggested, that people suggested as exemptions. I was very conservative there. N-Do you remember specifically some of the things that you found objectionable that didn’t end up in the bill? E-Well, I can’t, people made suggestions that sounded all right to different exemptions. Troubled women and this and that. I can’t remember the details, but I figured once you start on the exemptions, there’s no end to it. People can think up new ones, and they just shouldn’t be part of the law, or very, very few. We had to be very careful about the assets of the estate, that 38 we had to be sure that we weren’t being a do- gooder and doing away with the value of the estate. N-Do you recall in the mid-’70's when New York City was on the brink of bankruptcy? E-Oh, yeah, that was a real tragedy, I mean a real crisis. It was all night, every night, and Hugh Carey was Governor. He came rushing up and to save New York we wrote a new Title 9, is it? N-Chapter 9. E-A new Chapter 9. N-Who got the legislative momentum going, or did you need to get it going? I guess if New York City is going to go broke it doesn’t take much. E-Yeah.. I guess, was Rodino chairman then? N-I think he was. E-I think Peter did the whole thing, and Alan Parker who was his general counsel, very knowledgeable on bankruptcy. N-Who were the key people? Well, you’ve already mentioned Rodino. You must have gotten very involved because at that point you probably knew more about bankruptcy than anybody in the House. Did Wiggins get involved at all? E-Yeah.. Nobody felt it was a real crisis. We had to do the right thing. N-Who did you rely on, do you remember who you relied on outside the House for your expertise in the hearings, who you called? Vern Countryman, I know, was one of the witnesses. E-Yes, Vern Countryman. N-And Larry King. E-Larry King. I think Larry was very much involved. N-Is there anything else about what went on then that you can remember? 39 E-No, I can’t. N-O.K. What would you have done differently in the substance of the ‘78 Code if you had it to do all over again? E-Well, I think I would not have given the states as much leeway, and I don’t think we did in the House bill, in exemptions. I think Texas and a few others were taking advantage of the law. Special interests had more influence than they should have. And tenure N-Life time tenure for bankruptcy judges E-Lifetime tenure for bankruptcy judges, yeah. Those are about the only two things that I can think of. It’s been so long. N-If you had it to do over again, would you require the bankruptcy judge in chapter ll cases to consider community interests and job preservation as express statutory factors? E-I haven’t any idea. N-O.K. E-I generally would be in favor of something like that, but I also have a congenital reluctance to get into legislative proposals such as that. I’d rather leave it up to the good sense and the decency of the individual judges. The culture itself I would hope would take care of it. N-When you were working on the Bill, did you ever envision that Chapter ll would be used to, for example, to reject collective bargaining agreements? E-No, never entered my head. N-Or deal with mass torts like asbestos and IUD’s and the Dalkon Shield case with A. H. Robins? E-No, we didn’t and actually when the asbestos cases came along. . . 40 N-Johns Manville, I guess, you’re thinking of. . . E-Yeah.. Some very responsible friends of mine who were in the legal profession, big law firms, maybe Arnold and Porter in Washington came to see me to point out what they were going to do and ask for help. I don’t remember much more than that. N-Or deal with environmental problems, that probably was something that no one really could have envisioned, I guess. Are you bothered at all that bankruptcy has become so popular? I mean we’re going to have a million filings this year, they say. E-I would be bothered if I would read articles about it from people that I trust, and if people would be contacting me and talking to me about the need for further reform. But that’s not true. Generally speaking, I think people, the public, and experts and knowledgeable people think the bankruptcy laws are pretty darn good, and the reforms we made were about right. N-From your perspective, what function does personal bankruptcy serve in society? E-Oh, I think, the fresh start is so important and protecting the estate. It just makes for a civil society. It makes it possible to be in business and possible to run your household. It’s just great. It’s a wonderful protection for everybody. N-When the Supreme Court declared the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court’s unconstitutional in l982, did you get back involved in the legislative process at that point? E-No. N-Is there any particular reason why, were you busy with other things? E-No, I lost jurisdiction. Because Rodino wanted it. Alan Parker wanted it. N-I see. E-As general counsel, he was very interested. Because I would have given it attention if Rodino 41 didn’t have time or wasn’t interested in doing it. N-So you had very little input then into what happened in l984 ultimately, is that it? E-I don’t even know what happened. N-O.K. Let me go back and trace the other parts of your career. Has the quality of the legislative process deteriorated do you think over time? E-No, it’s better. N-Really? In what ways? E-Well, the work has been divided up so that younger people, newer people, have a voice, have more responsibility. It’s. . . N-Is it as civil or more civil than it used to be? E-Oh, I suppose a certain amount of respect has gone, and civility. But I remember Henry Gonzalez punching out a guy on the floor of the House when I went there. A lot of guys would drink and stand up and make speeches when I knew they were, and it was very clear they had been drinking. And at night when the session was over, they would adjourn to little rooms and drink whiskey. It was much harder drinking in those days. No, I think it’s better now. Rules are a lot better. The five minute rule and things like that. Although Gingrich is very powerful in the House and he picks the chairmen of the committees. He’s going back to the old days before the reforms where the caucus doesn’t do it anymore. He’s so overwhelmingly powerful, at least in the Republican caucus. N-What is your impression of him? E-Oh, I never liked him as a member. He’s smart, he’s as smart as he can be, but he’s not smart enough to pull in his horns. He could have changed his personality to some extent just by being 42 mum, mysterious, and been a lot more popular. It must be embarrassing for him to have thousands of members running against him by using his name in last year’s election. N-What was your most memorable thing that happened to you while you were in your long career as a Congressman? What stands out most in your mind? E-Well, I think one night we passed the habeas corpus reform and the crime bill, and I was the leader for that. It was a great victory against Strom Thurmond who killed it in the Senate, but it was something that was a real thrill because it was down hill from then on for habeas. N-When would that have been? E-About three or four or five years ago. It was a beautiful moment. N-What was it all about? E-Well, it was about allowing people who were, generally speaking, people who were going to be killed to get an examination in the Federal system of the denial of their fair trial in the states. And I held hearings over and over on the outrages that were perpetrated chiefly against minorities. We had a case where the guy would be indicted in the morning, tried in the afternoon, and executed the next morning. We had these $200 judges all over the South, who would be representing defendants in capital cases who would be drunk, and refer to their clients as “a nigger.” And our reform gave them, guaranteed them under limited circumstances, we insisted that they have a decent lawyer. In capital cases you were guaranteed a lawyer who was qualified, that’s the essence of the matter, and some states have that provision now. It’s a lot of trouble, but they do have that. N-But it died in the Senate. E-It died in the Senate, yeah. 43 N-Strom Thurmond killed it? E-Yeah. He called it habus corpus. You can see, I think he was a pretty evil old man. He will out live me, maybe you. N-I want to go back for just a second because I didn’t ask you. To what extent was Chief Justice Burger involved in the fight against the Article III status for bankruptcy judges in the Senate, do you know anything about that? E-No, I’m sure he was against it, very strongly. He was terribly against it. He came rushing over to the Senate, personally, which we resented, and he went from office to office. Yeah, I remember that. N-He actually came over to the Senate? E-He walked over. It was untoward. He shouldn’t have done it. Judges aren’t suppose to do that, Supreme Court judges, but he did . He came over personally. He was seen in the night. He was seen there. N-I guess I’ve never heard that before. E-It’s true. N-And I guess, you’ve already indicated that you had stacks and stacks of letters and so forth from federal judges and district judges, as being opposed to it, or Court of Appeals Judges. E-Yeah. N-I think you’ve already answered this question, but what do you view as being your greatest accomplishment, the thing that you feel best about so far in your career? E-Well, I feel awfully good about slipping the Bankruptcy Bill through. I mean, I think it was a real accomplishment of Wiggins and I and the staff and the people involved, the judges 44 themselves, and the Bankruptcy Bar, Consumer Bar, the guys, the lawyers in San Jose representing the consumer, the little guys. They were very pleased and they have been my friends ever since. I don’t see any negatives in it. Maybe, as you mentioned, there are some negatives in it that nobody has bothered me about. That, and, oh, a big wildlife refuge that I was able to enact. But I guess my work in civil liberties and civil rights are things that I think are of some importance. Nobody’s of great importance in our country. You come along and you do your thing, and in a few years nobody remembers your name. But, that’s all right. But, I wrote the Freedom of Choice Act for an abortion, and we almost got that through. So I am glad I did that kind of work. So I’ve tried to be a consistent liberal, a trustworthy liberal. And if they write that on my grave stone, I’d be happy about it. N-You mentioned Ronald Reagan. You referred to him as being a cold- blooded kind of character. What kind of a man otherwise do you think he was? Did you have much contact with him? E-Well, he was a charming old guy. Now Earl Warren I loved. He was a friend of mine, and I really liked him. He and Reagan were different. He wasn’t as effective as Reagan. Reagan was very effective as President. He had three or four ideas, and most of them had to do with destroying the power of the Federal government. He didn’t like the Federal government that had the taxing power and things like that. But, I didn’t know him personally. As Dean of the California delegation, I would be the head of the little delegation that would lead a California President like Reagan into the chamber of the House when the joint session, when he was going to deliver the State of the Union. And I remember the first time when Reagan was going to deliver the State of the Union, and they said “Edwards, you’re to go up to the Speaker’s Office 45 and escort, and be the head of the party that escorts, President Reagan into the chamber for his speech.” So I went up. I got there about five minutes ahead of time, and I walked into his office, and knocked quietly and walked in, and here was Reagan just by himself. So he and I just faced each other, and I wondered what am I going to say, you know. And so I said to him “Mr. President, it’s nice to have you here.” And then I searched around and said “You know, do you have any rattle snakes on your ranch back in Santa Barbara?” He said “That’s interesting.” He said “Don, we do have rattle snakes up there.” He said “Just last week Nancy and I were there, and we were riding our horses. And we put our horses up, and I was going walking back to the ranch house. Usually when I see a rattle snake I step on its, when it crosses the path, then I step on his head with my boots. So I was walking back, and there was about a four foot rattle snake crossing the path. So I put up my foot, and I stamped on its head. I looked down, and I had tennis shoes on.” (Laughter) I said “Oh, my God.” He said “I got him.” One of my only conversations with Reagan. N-What made you ask him that question? E-God knows. We didn’t have any subjects we could discuss. N-You probably didn’t agree on much of anything. E-I can’t think of anything. N-What did you think of George Bush? E-Oh, I liked him all right. I remember that as a member of the House he voted against the Civil Rights Bill of ‘64 and probably against the Voting Rights Act of ‘65. Those guys were rather ineffective. N-How about Bill Clinton? 46 E-Well, I worked hard for him. He and I had a good relationship when I was there. Janet Reno and I are good friends, and Louis Freeh. And Bill Clinton always says “”Hi, Don, how are you,” and so forth. I’m disappointed in his civil liberties insensitivity. I think what he did on that Immigration Bill is disgraceful. I think he’s not strong on the issues that I care about. Separation of church and state, he’s not good on, and I think that during these next four years he could sell us out on civil liberties very easily. N-What about Earl Warren? You mentioned that you knew him quite well. E-He was just great. N-What can you tell me about him? E-Well, I guess the most important fact I could tell you about him is he helped me very much get a District Court in San Jose. I felt it was my responsibility to get a District Court in San Jose. It became as big as San Francisco and all my lawyers had to go 50 miles to go to Federal Court, and it just didn’t make sense. And the judges didn’t like the idea of moving. They’d like to move to San Francisco, retire up there, live on Nob Hill and go to the Palace Hotel and be big shots, you know. They didn’t want competition in San Jose, so I went to Earl Warren and said “We’ve got to get this bill through for a division in San Jose.” He said “I think you’re right, Don.” And he said “Of course the judges are after me. My friends on the Court they don’t like it at all.” And he said “I’m going to have to be very quiet about it, but I think you’ve got to do it.” And he did. He helped us smooth a way for passage in the House of a Division in San Jose. N-You must have known him when he was a District Attorney in Alameda County. E-No, I knew him when he was Governor sort of, Republican Governor when I was Chairman of the Young Republicans a little bit, but Oakland and San Jose are far apart. 47 N-Right. So you didn’t meet him until you got, or got to know him better until you got into the Congress? E-I didn’t, until he became Chief Justice. N-Was he another one of those people that you became close friends with on that court? E-No, not personal friends. I didn’t pal around with him at all. N-What would you say is your greatest disappointment in your career thus far? E-Well, I think what’s happened to the black people of our country. We had, we really had things going in ‘64 and ‘65, and up until the Nixon years we had a national desire and commitment to making their lives decent and bringing them into American society as equal partners. And that’s been almost reversed, and it really started with Ronald Reagan who with his color blind society, and all of his vetoes of the various civil rights bills that we had. And he made being non-caring legitimate, where you can have the respect of people and not be a person who gives a darn about the plight of black Americans. We have done so many awful things to them starting with slavery until, you have to remember when I was elected to Congress we had an apartheid in 11 states of the old Confederacy, equal or worse than in South Africa. So we by two bills, ‘64 and ‘65 we got rid of that. And so we were going up hill, and for the last 20 odd years we’ve been going down hill . Now we’ve practically done away with affirmative action. You just read daily about the discrimination that’s going on in every profession against black people and so forth, so I guess that’s my disappointment. And that has a lot to do with the crime rate in our country, too. N-This may sound like a strange question, but do you think that anything would have been changed if Gerald Ford had won the election in ‘76 versus Jimmy Carter? 48 E-No, I don’t think so. N-Do you think Ronald Regan would ever have been President ? E-Well, I think he was destined to be President, yeah. N-I didn’t ask you about Jimmy Carter. I forgot. What was your impression of him? Did you get to know him very well? E-No, not very well. N-He apparently was not a very easy person to get to know, I guess. E-No. He ran a very ineffectual White House. N-Could he have done more to have reversed the slide that started back around the Nixon years in civil rights? E-Oh, sure, he could have done more. He could have, like Lyndon Johnson, been dedicated to making a difference. It wasn’t in him. N-Well, this is your opportunity. I think I’ve asked you all the questions that I have, but this is your opportunity if you have anything. I told you, I think, in my letter this is an historical archive, and, as such, I try to give everybody an opportunity at the end of the interview to say whatever it is they think they’d like to say for the record for history purposes. And I’d like to give you that opportunity at this point if there’s anything you’d like to add to the record. E-Well, in essence, this is a bankruptcy interview and my small part in the enactment of the reforms of the Bankruptcy Code, and I’m, I would just hope that the American people generally appreciate what we have in the bankruptcy law. It is a very good thing. It’s a very civilized part of our society, our culture, and it is something to be protected, and we shouldn’t allow it, and I have no idea what would attack it, but it seems to me that the dignity of Federal judges has been 49 denigrated and weakened recently by the Legislature, especially Congress and State Legislatures in enacting one law after another that takes away the discretion. The whole purpose of life tenure is to dignify the job so that the wisdom of a judge can be exercised, and if you take it away by making up, by law, the whole country suffers, and the country is suffering. And I do not want that to happen to the bankruptcy judges either. We did try to establish them at a higher level, and I think that ought to be continued there. N-If it’s any comfort to you, you have certainly achieved that. The difference between even the time I was appointed in l982 and now is enormously different in the way bankruptcy judges are viewed, I think, than the way they used to be viewed. E-Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that, and I thank you for it. N-I thank you for your time, the time you’ve given me this morning. E-Well, I think it’s great that you’re doing this work, Randy, it’s just great. N-Thanks for taking the time. E-A great pleasure. 50