Washington's Other Monument

By Bruce W. Nelan

COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT

by Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke

Random House; 709 pages; $25

Of the two most prominent Washington monuments, one is 555 ft. tall, and the other is Clark Clifford, who has practiced law and government in the capital for 46 years. Unlike the marble monument, Clifford inspires genuine awe among even the most jaded political operators: few have served their country more admirably while in government -- or greased the wheels so effectively for clients after entering private practice.

Though he is now under investigation in a banking scandal, this measured memoir is a reminder that Clifford came by his stature the honest way. A successful St. Louis lawyer before World War II, Clifford was called to the White House in 1945 as assistant to Harry Truman's naval aide. He was soon named special counsel to the President. No less than Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Clifford was present at the creation of the policies and institutions that won the cold war: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Department of Defense, NATO.

Clifford also arranged and played in Truman's famous eight-man poker games on the presidential yacht, where he became friendly with powerful politicians who proved useful when he set up his law practice in 1950. Deflecting job offers from several Presidents, Clifford since then has served only nine months in public office. The most compelling chapters in his book cover 1968, when, as Secretary of Defense, he overcame much of the Washington foreign policy and military establishment in the "war for the President's mind." He and a few allies persuaded Lyndon Johnson to try to "extricate our nation from an endless war." Vietnam, Clifford argued, was "unwinnable at any reasonable level of American participation."

Clifford prefers to see himself as a statesman using the "art of persuasion," but most of the time, he has been a hired gun in Washington's range wars, a tactician seeking out the right angle of attack. He counseled Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Bert Lance on his banking problems, Speaker of the House Jim Wright on his ethics, and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas on conflict-of-interest charges.

In light of Clifford's current troubles, his reflections on Fortas are heavy with irony. "What had driven a man of such exceptional intelligence to bring himself down through such dubious financial arrangements?" he asks. His answer: Fortas "wanted both the glory of public service and the wealth of a successful private lawyer."

Jim Wright's fall, Clifford observes, had elements of Greek tragedy. The same is true of Clifford's present crisis. If he has a tragic flaw, it might ^ be his compulsion to stay in what he calls "Washington's great contest." He was one of the city's most incurable workaholics, putting in nights and weekends at the office so he could take on presidential errands and still have a flourishing practice. When Ronald Reagan took over the White House, and conservative Republicanism became the spirit of the times, Clifford must have felt increasingly outside the power game.

Clifford became chairman of First American Bankshares, Inc., now linked to a shady foreign bank, in 1982, at the age of 75. "I wanted a new challenge in my life," he explains. Perhaps he did not ask himself if what the bank wanted was the legendary power of his name. Today, to his "anger and outrage," he finds he has been used. His reputation for probity and integrity has been sullied, and he has been made to seem either foolish or crooked. Clifford's art of persuasion remains so strong that readers of his book will find it difficult to believe that he is either.