Leftovers

By Gerald Clarke

REFLECTIONS WITHOUT MIRRORS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE MIND by Louis Nizer Doubleday; 469 pages; $10.95

Ask a fan what the great American sport is, and he will probably give one of three answers: football, baseball or basketball. In each case he would be wrong. The true national sport is the law, and the contest Americans love best is the one in the courtroom, where lives are at stake and vast sums can be won or lost on a lawyer's forward motion.

The Howard Cosell of the legal game is Louis Nizer, 75, a distinguished New York lawyer whose reportage can make the driest case read like The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Two previous books based on his own courtroom experiences, My Life in Court and The Jury Returns, were longtime bestsellers. Nizer represented Journalist Quentin Reynolds in a successful libel suit against Columnist Westbrook Pegler, and the account was exciting enough to be made into a Broadway play and a TV drama. The present volume suffers greatly by comparison. Part autobiography, part a philosophical guide to the law, it is mostly leftovers, with only a few fresh morsels to offer.

One of the most interesting chapters, naturally enough, involves the Kennedys, and it will not be pleasant reading for their hagiographers. In the early '60s, the Justice Department, under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, began investigating an old family friend, Publicist Igor Cassini, for his supposed failure to register as a foreign agent. Cassini, who wrote a gossip column for the Hearst papers under the name Cholly Knickerbocker, was suspected of illegally representing the Dominican Republic and Dictator Rafael Trujillo in the U.S. Perhaps because of his family's friendship with Cassini, Bobby Kennedy pursued him with extraordinary ferocity, afraid that he and his brother would otherwise be accused of favoritism.

In fact, says Nizer, the Government's case was based on a suspicious but innocent transfer of funds between the man who did represent the Dominican Republic and Cassini. Any jury, he says, would have found for the defendant. Nizer pointed out the flimsiness of the Government's position to Jack Kennedy, who was shocked when Cassini's wife cracked under the strain and killed herself. Both Jack and Joe Kennedy urged mercy for Igor, but Bobby persisted. Finally, Nizer realized that Bobby had gone so far as to have the FBI tap his phone conversations with his client. "I was stunned," he writes, "by this violation of law by the Attorney General in the course of trying to prove a violation by Igor . . . I had to curb my impulse to tell him just what I thought of his tactics and venom. But always in such moments, the lawyer's thoughts must be of his client. I would injure Igor if I 'broke' with Bobby. A lawyer can afford to be emotional on behalf of his client, but not to his injury." Eventually, Nizer's patience won the case, or most of it. The Justice Department dropped three indictments, and Cassini pleaded no contest to the fourth, a relatively minor one. He was fined $10,000 and placed on six months' probation.

Like all good lawyers, Nizer has spent as much time talking clients out of law suits as he has trying to win them. "Legal warfare is expensive and harrowing," he says. "It should be resorted to only when there is real damage, not merely high sensitivity to a slur." He advised Lyndon Johnson against suing the Saturday Evening Post for putting words into his mouth, and dissuaded the late Jacqueline Susann from taking on Truman Capote for suggesting that she looked like "a truck driver in drag." "She wished revenge," Nizer recalls. "She wanted to see the day when 'the little worm would squirm under cross-examination.' " Capote replied that his comment was bitchy, but not a libelous attack. Nizer counseled restraint and, eventually, Susann let the matter drop.

Louis Nizer might have been equally well advised to let other matters drop. Charming in parts, fascinating on occasion, Reflections Without Mirrors is, at 469 pages, too much, and yet not enough. The author-attorney has given his best before, and, like all writers of sequels, he now finds his stock depleted. Other lawyers will no doubt remain attentive throughout, but the jury--the ordinary reader--may render a less favorable verdict.

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