The Briefcase Brigade

Washington had withstood civil rights marchers, poor people and antiwar demonstrators. But last week the capital came under siege from legions whose troops represented the Establishment itself. Nearly 1,000 New York lawyers, some of them from the same firm in which the President and Attorney General John Mitchell had once been partners, appeared to plead the case for peace in Southeast Asia.

Neatly dressed in pin stripes and conservative gray flannel, the briefcase brigade constituted a cross section of the New York bar. Among its members were retired judges, shaggy-maned young associates and grizzled senior partners. They came to Washington not to demonstrate, but to argue.

For many of the lawyers, the trip to Washington began at Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station at the unaccustomed hour of 6:30 a.m. Boarding eight special cars, the attorneys spent most of the four-hour trip reviewing carefully prepared briefing packages that included biographies of the Congressmen they were to see and legal arguments against Nixon's action in Cambodia. In keeping with legal procedures, the papers were labeled Exhibits A, B and C.

To many, the trip was an initiation into the politics of protest. "This is the first time I've ever done anything," said Seymour Hertz, 37, a specialist in corporate and securities law. "I'm just frightened by what's happening in this country; Viet Nam isn't worth it." Most regarded the visit to Washington as a unique opportunity to get their ideas on the war across to the Government. "We're lawyers, not longhairs," said Randy Bevis, 29, a member of Thomas Dewey's law firm. "We're respectable, and I think we can get our foot in the door."

But some doors remained closed. Following a meeting on the steps of the Capitol the lawyers split up into 150 teams to buttonhole other Senators and Congressmen. Bar Association President Francis Plimpton, a former deputy delegate to the United Nations, was turned away when he tried to see Senator Ernest Rollings. New York State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein found Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott too preoccupied with legislative problems to heed the attorneys' brief that the President had gone beyond the law in sending troops into Cambodia. "I'm not sure the message got through," Ohrenstein said. Nor was Attorney Orville Schell certain that he managed to reach Attorney General Mitchell during a meeting with the President's chief domestic adviser. Said Schell: "We were polite, we were cool, but we certainly didn't make any visible impression."

Despite the failure of their proselytizing efforts, the lawyers felt that their trip was not wasted. Since 1940, New York law firms have provided the country with seven top Cabinet officers and scores of second-echelon officials. The fact that these same firms are now swelling the ranks of the Government's opposition should provide dissenting members of the Administration with fresh ammunition that Nixon's policies have split even the most established of the Establishment.

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