Crying Foul

By Robert T. Grieves

Mary Cunningham tells tales

Mary Cunningham's name evokes scenes of boardroom intrigue, corridor passion and mergermaking behind closed doors. For more than three years Cunningham, 32, has remained steadfastly silent about the intimate details of her swift rise and fall at Bendix and her highly publicized relationship with Bendix Chairman William Agee, 46. Now she, along with Fran Schumer, tells her tale in Powerplay: What Really Happened at Bendix (Linden Press/Simon & Schuster; $16.95).

From a strict Roman Catholic upbringing in Hanover, N.H., where she was a studious child ("I could sense that people felt I put a damper on things"), Cunningham emerged with high ideals and fierce ambition. She graduated from Wellesley, married Howard ("Bo") Gray, a black New York City banker, and earned a degree from the Harvard Business School in 1979. After considering more than 30 job offers, she accepted one as the executive assistant to Agee at Bendix, a conglomerate based in Southfield, Mich. Cunningham moved to Michigan while her husband remained in New York. The couple later divorced.

At Bendix, Agee began turning to Cunningham for advice on matters ranging from company strategy to finding a cleaning woman. She and Agee shared a disdain for the performance of many Bendix executives. After a year as executive assistant, she became vice president for public relations, and later assumed responsibility for strategic planning.

By September 1980, however, Bendix was buzzing with rumors about romance in the executive suite. Not only had Cunningham's rapid rise attracted attention, but the boss seemed to be spending an unusual amount of time with her. They checked into the same hotels on business trips, shared limousines and spent late nights working together. The two strongly denied the charges of a romance, and Cunningham today insists that she was the victim of office gossips who envied her position. Bowing to pressure inside and outside the company, Bendix officials forced Cunningham to resign in October 1980. Less than two years later, she and Agee were married.

Two months after the marriage, Cunningham, who was now a vice president for planning at Seagram's, and Agee were again in the news. Agee was leading a Bendix attempt to take over Martin Marietta, the defense contractor, and Cunningham was at his side. In the end, Bendix not only failed to get Martin Marietta but was taken over by Allied.

Powerplay might be better subtitled Everybody in the World Against Me. Cunningham, for example, bitterly denounces Bendix Board Members Peter Peterson, former chairman of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, for trying to nudge her out. She quotes Rumsfeld as telling Agee, "All right. So you piddled on the floor. But you don't have to have your face wiped in it. She's got to go." Cunningham charges W. Michael Blumenthal, former Bendix chairman and Treasury Secretary under Jimmy Carter, with spreading malicious gossip. She writes that Blumenthal remarked to Bendix Board Member Harry Cunningham, "Say, what's Agee got going there? Is he having some kind of mid-life crisis or has he lost all judgment?"

Cunningham's wrath is not confined to Bendix. She blasts Thornton Bradshaw, chairman of RCA, for his insulting rebuff to Agee's attempt to increase Bendix's stock ownership in that company. Bradshaw put out a statement saying, "Mr. Agee has not demonstrated the ability to manage his own affairs, let alone someone else's." The press receives Cunningham's harshest words. In the book's prologue she writes, "My name was tainted in the press from Day One, and that makes me more cynical than I was ever taught it was right to be."

While Cunningham insists that she and Agee did not have an affair while at Bendix, the book contains some kiss and tell. Not long after her departure from .the firm, Agee came down with a case of mononucleosis, and she traveled to his vacation home in McCall, Idaho, to help him recuperate. They later began calling each other after she returned to New York City. Their first kiss occurred one night when Agee visited her Brooklyn apartment. Writes Cunningham: "I went into the cramped kitchen to make a pot of tea. When I came out, Bill came up to me and said, 'I want to give you something I've been waiting to share for such a long time.' And then we kissed. How natural and good it felt."

--By Robert T. Grieves