THEY WANT TO TELL US: BATTLE OF THE O.J. BOOKS

By JAMES COLLINS

For those with an interest in the weak side of human nature, the beauty of the O.J. Simpson case is that just when you think the possibilities have been exhausted, someone else comes along and does something low and discreditable. Robert Kardashian is one of Simpson's close friends, and it was at his house that Simpson was staying before he set off in his Bronco. Kardashian spent months at Simpson's side during the trial. Now, in return for money, he has helped produce a book in which he cast doubts on Simpson's innocence. He has betrayed a friend, and also a client, since he was part of Simpson's defense team. Whatever you think of that friend and client, Kardashian's was not a noble act. Many of those who follow the case have denounced him, and he is under investigation by the California Bar Association. Score another one for O.J.-related venality.

The book in question, which arrived in stores last week, is American Tragedy by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth, a TIME correspondent who covered the trial. Schiller is a colorful operator whose exploits include photographing Marilyn Monroe in the nude and providing Norman Mailer with the reporting about Gary Gilmore for The Executioner's Song. Schiller was the one who created and sold Simpson's sanctimonious, self-serving best seller, I Want to Tell You, and thereby raised money to pay Simpson's lawyers. With American Tragedy, he has produced quite a different book, a serious effort that describes the conduct of the Simpson defense in rich detail.

Schiller has also provoked a battery of charges and countercharges about ethics and truthfulness that involve not only Kardashian, but some of Simpson's other lawyers, as well as Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Run of His Life, currently a best-selling Simpson book, and Johnnie Cochran Jr., Simpson's lead attorney, who has a new book out too. His is a vain autobiography called Journey to Justice. Toobin and Cochran are both attacking Schiller, and, for good measure, each other. Opening arguments for Simpson's next trial, the civil one, are set to begin this week, but make no mistake, the first show is still running.

The most devastating information provided by Kardashian in American Tragedy concerns a lie detector test that he says Simpson took two days after the murders. The test was arranged by Robert Shapiro, one of Simpson's lawyers, and was intended to help the defense. According to American Tragedy, Simpson scored a "minus 22," failing virtually every question asked about the murders. Simpson said, "Every time I heard Nicole's name, my heart would beat so fast, it would race, you know?" Apart from the matter of personal loyalty, it violates the professional code of ethics for a lawyer to ever reveal something incriminating about a client. "This is absolutely reprehensible," says fellow defense counsel F. Lee Bailey (who chatted freely with the media during the trial). Bailey also insists he stopped the test before it was completed.

Kardashian confessed to Schiller his concern that the blood evidence points to Simpson; he offered up what he claimed was defense attorney Shapiro's theory of how Simpson committed the murders, and he described how the defense team redid Simpson's home before the jury visit, taking down photographs of white women and putting up pictures of black women, including Norman Rockwell's famous painting of a black girl being escorted to school by federal marshals. Cochran told Time that this anecdote is "an absolute lie." But Willwerth says they had it from three different sources, and Schiller saw the changes himself.

Carl Douglas and Shawn Chapman, lawyers in Cochran's office, also gave interviews to Schiller, as did 27 other people. The only one of the group who really risks sanctions from the California bar, however, is Kardashian. According to Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics expert at New York University, Schiller's journalistic privilege could have shielded Kardashian as a source for the book--if he hadn't gone on abc's 20/20 and repeated many of the damaging revelations about Simpson. "This is tantamount to a confession of professional misconduct by Kardashian," Gillers says. "It's like videotaping your own crime." The worst punishment Kardashian could suffer, though, is to be disbarred--and since he hadn't practiced law for years before the Simpson trial, that would not be a huge sacrifice.

Whether or not they are disciplined, Douglas and Chapman still may have acted improperly. Asked about how he will deal with them, Cochran says, "That's a tough, tough question." He also insists, "I never talked to Schiller," though Schiller contends he was interviewed off the record. According to Willwerth, Cochran called Schiller often, stood by during several of the interviews with Douglas, and even had aides call to ask for information for his own book. Cochran denies it.

Cochran blames Kardashian and Schiller for misleading the defense lawyers. "They trusted Bob Kardashian," he says. "The understanding was that anything they said would be vetted. In other words, any attorney-client stuff would be taken out." Peter Neufeld, another member of the defense team, adds, "There is no question that Mr. Schiller and Mr. Kardashian have fraudulently obtained information under false pretenses from various people." Schiller denies there was any agreement about vetting American Tragedy. The only agreement Schiller says he made was to allow the lawyers to check their quotes for accuracy.

Toobin criticizes Schiller from another direction, objecting that he was too close to the defense team, especially since he was financially involved with it. "Larry Schiller was in business with O.J.," Toobin says. "Are we now to believe that he's no longer involved with Simpson?" Schiller admits he "ingratiated" himself with the Simpson team--the family even got him a seat at the trial--but he insists that his book is unbiased, and he makes no apologies for his methods. "You pay for access. You don't pay for what somebody says. They answered my questions. The validity of the work is in the work at the end." Most mainstream journalists would disagree with Schiller, but it must be said, his is the fullest and most vivid account of the Simpson trial so far. Bailey says Simpson isn't bitter toward Kardashian: "He says he understands that Bob had to do this."

The fact that Schiller, Toobin and Cochran are all published by Random House, Inc., has not tempered their Bosnia-like, three-way war. When Cochran finishes attacking Schiller, he has a few choice words to say about Toobin: "His opinions really are racist in their implications: that the jurors weren't very smart, that I'm this charismatic fellow that goes around and convinces people of stuff." Cochran simply denies a big scoop in The Run of His Life, that shortly after the murders, he told a friend Simpson should plead guilty.

Given all these accusations, it is impossible for the three authors each to be telling the truth, and in a different world this might trouble their shared publishing house. But that is not the kind of world we are living in, especially in its O.J. latitudes.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York