The name, Aubrey Daniel III, rang a bell. But for an hour or so I couldn’t quite place it.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal disclosed stunning details about what might prove to be a head-turning legal confrontation: the U.S. Justice Department against Decatur-based agricultural goliath Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (and maybe others).
The paper indicated that a previously disclosed, but little-noted, antitrust investigation had at least one piece of potent, two-legged ammunition: a 38-year-old rising star of an ADM executive and “boy wonder” biochemist.
For three years, it reported, he has been an FBI mole, securing tons of audio- and videotapes of high-level meetings worldwide at which, it is implied, multimillion-dollar price fixing perhaps played out.
ADM, the 92nd largest of the Fortune 500 firms, is the 16,000-employee, $11 billion-a-year, self-described “supermarket to the world,” whose products touch our lives in many ways, such as in the sweeteners used in most of our soft drinks, and a range of livestock feed supplements and other chemicals used by the drug and food industries.
It is also a prime advertiser on the biggest pundit-filled TV shows, ranging from “This Week With David Brinkley” to “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” It has cultivated huge political influence, in part reflecting hefty donations to candidates as diverse as Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, all overseen by boss Dwayne Andreas (who reads his home-delivered Tribune religiously at 6 a.m. in his Decatur home, we must note).
But what about Aubrey Daniel III?
On Tuesday, the day after its disclosure, the Journal noted that “Archer-Daniels has retained Aubrey M. Daniel III, an attorney with the firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, to conduct an outside-counsel investigation of the company.”
Several hours later, President Clinton announced resumption of diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Bam! Aubrey Daniel, I recalled, was the prosecutor in the Calley case.
It was 1971, the Vietnam War raged and a story of the day was the court martial of Army Lt. William Calley, among 25 soldiers implicated (though he was the only one convicted) in the March 16, 1968, massacre, and coverup, of as many as 400 Vietnamese women, children and old men. Word of the My Lai massacre (brought to light largely via former Chicago journalist Seymour Hersh) surely helped turn many Americans against the war.
I found the daily coverage unavoidable, especially the efforts of the 29-year-old prosecutor, Aubrey Daniel III. He concluded with a more-than-3-hour, largely extemporaneous summation in which he offered a devastating critique of Calley’s actions and a heartening articulation of the entire military-justice system at a time when no shortage of Americans were convinced Calley was simply a scapegoat.
The evidence was overwhelming, he said, that Calley deliberately murdered 102 Vietnamese civilians, including a man in white robes who might well have been a monk, and a 2-year-old fleeing a pile of 70 corpses in a ditch.
Calley, “by this slaughter of innocent civilians . . . prostituted all the humanitarian principles for which this country stands,” said Daniel, then only four years out of law school.
“The obedience of a soldier to orders is not the obedience of an automaton,” Daniel said, alluding to Calley claims he was, at worst, loyally following orders from his company commander (Capt. Ernest Medina, represented by F. Lee Bailey of current O.J. Simpson ignominy). “When a man wears a soldier’s uniform, he is still required to think, to make moral decisions, to know what is right and wrong. We know that the accused in fact never received orders to round up and execute civilians.
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“He was given no license to slaughter unarmed women and children,” Daniel said. “He assumed responsibility for their deaths, so now he must assume responsibility for this unlawful act.”
I recall a college political philosophy class I was in putting aside the scheduled topic and discussing the words of Daniel.
Calley was convicted of murder and sentenced by the jury (six officers, five of whom were Vietnam veterans) to life imprisonment at hard labor. But he never made it to a federal prison.
First, his sentence was reduced to 20 years. Then, Nixon ordered him out of the brig and into house arrest. He stayed in his own apartment at Ft. Benning, Ga., and 40 months later saw his conviction thrown out by a federal judge.
An appeals court reversed that, but Calley never returned to custody and later married the daughter of a wealthy jeweler in Columbus, Ga., where he settled.
As for Daniel, he was so outraged at Nixon’s decision, he sent him a letter of protest. It received much attention, including from the late Edward Bennett Williams, a then-nationally renowned trial attorney (clients included Teamster legend Jimmy Hoffa), high liver and owner of the Washington Redskins.
Williams read the story and, legend has it, offered a job at his law firm to Daniel, a graduate of the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia Law School. Williams, an impulsive sort whose firm is one of the profession’s best, did things like that.
Daniel has had a good career, practicing mostly major commercial litigation, and is a pillar of the firm. He has done lots of work for ADM in the past, including handling the successful defense of a previous civil antitrust case involving carbon dioxide, and other big clients have included International Harvester. The law firm also represents ADM as it seeks to recover from its insurer many hundreds of millions of dollars lost in the Midwest flood of two years ago.
He’s said to be a pretty straight arrow, very independent-minded, not cut from a flamboyant litigator mold, well-regarded, married to another partner in the firm, host of a yearly summer party for the firm’s summer associates (interns), and especially respected for what several colleagues call an impressive knack for dissecting, and commanding, complex cases.
He likes to hunt and fish and, last week, did not exhibit any interest in the press. He diplomatically turned down my request for a chat.
Given the possible troubles of ADM, he will have other chances. And whatever the outcome of this particular assignment, his honorable spot in history will remain.
Wait ’til next year
It was disclosed here two weeks ago that Ruth Shalit, a rising star at New Republic magazine, seemingly ripped off somebody else’s work for the second time in a year.
Each time, she mournfully told a similar tale to the offended author, recounting an act of cyperspace victimization, namely a horrible computer mishap in which material she pulled from elsewhere during an on-line search became intertwined with her personal notes.
Shalit, who’s getting increasing work from big-time glossy magazines like Gentlemen’s Quarterly, has apparently sold that line to her bosses.
The July 31 issue includes an item titled “Oops” in which readers are informed of the similarities between her July 3 story on moneybags publisher Steve Forbes and a June 3 piece by reporter Paul Starobin in the National Journal.
The similar words “were transposed on the computer from a downloaded Nexis search, which the author subsequently mistook for her own notes. Shalit regrets the error,” readers are told.
It’s too bad Smith-Corona went out of business.
Why not a wig, too?
The Washington Post reported Friday that Newsweek reporters Howard Fineman and Chicagoan Jonathan Alter were paid consultants to MTV, assisting host Tabitha Soren and six “twentysomethings” in preparing for a “rap session” taped with Newt Gingrich and due to air at 6 p.m. Sunday.
In part, they played the role of Gingrich (sans accent and white hair) in answering questions as they thought he might.
A bit tacky for a reporter? Roaming beyond journalism to suspect consulting?
Fineman says no. He says it was above-board “free-lancing for another news organization” aimed at helping Soren and the youngsters formulate questions and feel comfortable. He told the Gingrich camp, which had no problem.
One of his own bosses said Friday that the magazine, too, found this acceptable. Still, that may be debatable.