Toobin, Jeffrey. Opening Arguments -- A Young Lawyer's First Case: United
States v. Oliver North. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. 374 pages.
Twenty-six-year-old Jeffrey Toobin was fresh out of Harvard Law, and
despite his chosen profession he somehow viewed Washington DC as a case of
players in white hats v. players in black hats. He had fond memories of
watching the young lawyers on television who toted fat briefcases for the
Watergate prosecutor, and now he too had a chance to join Lawrence Walsh's
team and kick some black-hat ass. Toobin was assigned to the group that
built the case against Oliver North. During much of his 15 months on the
staff of the Office of Independent Counsel, Toobin and others deliberately
isolated themselves from news reports on Iran-contra, as they knew that they
would have to demonstrate to Judge Gerhard Gesell that their evidence was
not tainted by events that occurred subsequent to North's grant of immunity
from Congress. That alone should have convinced Toobin that the world
consists mostly of gray hats.
Walsh's team got nowhere in their attempts to get information out of
the CIA. In a final bizarre twist, even after the CIA cleared this book in
late 1989 without requiring changes, Walsh himself threatened Toobin's
publisher with criminal action, and dispatched some nosey FBI agents in an
effort to stop it. Washington in particular, it would seem, is more often
a case of black hats v. other black hats.
ISBN 0-14-016770-6
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