Friends in High Places: The Rise and Fall of Clark Clifford

by Douglas Frantz, David McKean

For more than forty years, Clark Clifford was Washington's consummate Democratic power broker - attorney and adviser to the nation's most influential leaders. His 1991 memoir, Counsel to the President, looked back on a remarkable career of public service. But the very year his autobiography was published, the Clifford legend began to crumble. Caught up in the scandal that destroyed the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the eighty-five-year-old Clifford was arrested on charges relating to his law firm's involvement with the outlaw bank. Though his case never went to trial, and his protege, Robert Altman, was found not guilty, Clifford's reputation was in ruins. How could such a man come to such an end? What happened? And why? In Friends in High Places, a noted investigative reporter and a chief investigator in the Senate inquiry on BCCI provide the answers. Drawing on original documents, more than a hundred interviews with Clifford's friends and adversaries, and fifty hours of interviews with Clifford himself, the authors reveal the drive and shrewdness that led Clifford to the pinnacle of power - and demonstrate convincingly that his involvement with BCCI was no aberration, but the bitter fruit of seeds planted at the beginning.

Genres: History

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1995

Reviews

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clark Clifford was a powerful Washington insider/lobbyist/lawyer/Secretary of Defense for LBJ. He reigned in Washington all the way from Truman's administration through Clinton's, and pulled all sorts of tricks without getting caught until the late 80s in a shady banking deal. This book is a fairly sympathetic biography of him, and it's a fun read if you are in to political scandal, especially as it has changed (or not) over the years. I didn't come away from the book liking or respecting Clifford (who was a liberal Democrat, or at least supposed to be one), as I think the authors may have wanted me to, but I did come away from it amused and aghast, and there was definitely some political dirt in it worth knowing. It was also interesting to get an idea of the old-school cronyism that went on to mediate my feelings about W's brand--he's not doing anything that wasn't perfected before he was even born. Maybe thinking things never actually change makes me a bad historian, but if the shoe fits...