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"Sir, I have never been to Paterson, New Jersey."

By Marks & Katz, LLC

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Ten years ago, lawyer Michael Tigar told the Washington Post that in interviewing to clerk for Justice William Brennan, Brennan asked Tigar "Did you attend a Communist Party training camp in Paterson, New Jersey?' " Tigar responded: "Sir, I have never been to Paterson, New Jersey." On Tigar's cross-country drive to start his 1966 clerkship with Brennan, Brennan cancelled the deal over concerns about Tigar's leftist student activities. In 1990, Brennan admitted he may have overreacted. With only $10 to his name, instead of getting a useless consolation prize, Tigar got hired by legendary lawyer Edward Bennett Williams.  In the summer of 1987, before ever hearing of Michael Tigar, each day I passed by [Edward Bennett] Williams & Connolly, when Brendan Sullivan from that firm represented Oliver North before Congress in the Iran-Contra hearings, on my way to my summer clerkship at the then-named Federal Home Loan Bank Board, during the savings and loan crisis that caught up so many banks regulated by the FHLBB...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on April 30, 2008 (boomark / email).