Leonard Weinglass, defense lawyer in Pentagon Papers case, dies at 77
by ELAINE WOOLos Angeles, kansascity.com
March 24th 2011 9:49 PM
Leonard Weinglass, a crusading lawyer who championed radical and liberal
causes and clients in some of the most controversial trials of the 1960s and
'70s, including the Chicago Seven and Pentagon Papers cases, died Wednesday
in New York City. He was 77.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Michael Krinsky, a colleague and
friend of 40 years.
Weinglass, who practiced in Los Angeles for two decades before moving to New
York, developed a reputation as a firebrand during the Chicago Seven
conspiracy case against anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic
National Convention. The defendants included Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin. Although Weinglass was considered less boisterous than
co-counsel William Kunstler, he was nonetheless cited for contempt 14 times
during the five-month trial, which resulted in acquittals.
He went on to defend other notorious clients, including Jane Fonda,
Symbionese Liberation Army members William and Emily Harris, Angela Davis,
Kathy Boudin and Mumia Abu-Jamal. He also represented former President Jimmy
Carter's daughter, Amy, who in 1987 was charged with disorderly conduct
after an anti-CIA demonstration at the University of Massachusetts.
Until days before his death, Weinglass was drafting briefs on behalf of the
so-called Cuban Five - five Cuban intelligence agents who were convicted in
2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of the government of
then-President Fidel Castro.
"He was committed to defending people who had controversial political views
and in one way or another was trying to change things, from civil rights to
the antiwar movement," Krinsky said.
Weinglass' most important case was the Pentagon Papers trial, which was
brought against defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg and researcher Anthony Russo
for Ellsberg's unauthorized release of a top-secret government history of
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The case against them was dismissed May
11, 1973, after the court learned that a covert team had broken into the
offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist looking for information to discredit the
star defendant.
As the lead defense lawyer in that case, Weinglass "understood the political
significance of the papers and what the Nixon administration was trying to
suppress. It was Act I of Watergate," said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for
the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who worked with
Weinglass on the case.
Weinglass was born Aug. 27, 1933, in Belleville, N.J. His mother was, he
once recalled, "an Adlai Stevenson Democrat," but his pharmacist father was
a Republican. When Weinglass was defending the Chicago Seven, his father
told him, "They ought to throw all of you in jail without bail."
He knew from an early age that he wanted to become a lawyer. He read the
words of Clarence Darrow while sweeping the floors in his uncle's law
office. A football star in high school, he earned a bachelor's degree from
George Washington University in 1955 and a law degree from Yale University
in 1958. After two years in the Air Force, he opened a storefront criminal
defense practice in Newark, N.J.
In 1964 he met Newark activist Tom Hayden, who changed his life. When
Hayden, a leader of Students for a Democratic Society, was arrested at the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago three years later, he asked
Weinglass to defend him.
"I had to convince my co-defendants that we needed a terrific courtroom
lawyer," Hayden said in an interview Thursday. "They'd never heard of him.
He wasn't involved in the movements. But I never met anyone in my life as
good in a courtroom as Len Weinglass. He would never lose his temper or
raise his voice. He tried to be as persuasive as possible and as plainspoken
as possible. He also always did preparatory work on motions that might
arise."
The trial, which turned into a media circus with testimony from such '60s
icons as LSD guru Timothy Leary and poet Allen Ginsberg, radicalized
Weinglass.
"The fact that the U.S. government could ... seek to put away people because
of their political dissent was really a major eye-opener for me," he told
Progressive magazine in 1996. "I had read and heard of such things, but I
had never been directly involved in such an event."
His soft-spoken intensity and dedication to his clients earned praise from
judges and prosecutors. "He's a hell of a thinker on his feet," the judge in
the Harris case, Mark Brandler, told the Los Angeles Times in 1980, "and
even when he was espousing his political causes during pretrial motions, he
at least did it with dignity."
Weinglass is survived by two sisters, Elaine Nicastro of Lebanon, N.J., and
Natalie Franzblau of Nutley, N.J.; and a brother, Steven Weinglass of Los
Angeles.
Original Page:
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