THE SPY FILES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302530032-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 32
• Publication Date: December 5, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL
5 December 1983
The Spy Files
B MARY ANN GALANTE Bill Dougherty Takes on the CIA
National Law Journal Staff Reporter
James D. Harper Jr., a computer con-
ILLA PARK, Calif. - When the sultant and failed businessman from
V man who identified himself only California's high-tech "Silicon Val-
as "Jay" called to say. he ley" near San Francisco.
wanted a lawyer because he was sell-
ing American missile secrets to Com- Npercent".,of OW, according to Mr.
munist powers, William A. Dougherty Dougherty's own estimate, ` 90
thought to himself: "Here we go the material being
again." used by a San Francisco grand jury to
The burly 59-year-old-sole prac- draw up the Harper indictment is
titioner's normal case load runs more derived from material Mr. Dougherty
to mail fraud or bank robbery or himself supplied to the authorities
drunk driving, but by the time the call when his client was still anonymous.
from "Jay" came in 1981, a bestselling In fact, it was this information that
book had given him some renown as a helped the FBI to determine Jay's
"spy lawyer." identity and make the arrest.
In fact, it was Robert Lindsey's It has all led to a lot of Monday-
book "The Falcon and the Snowman," morning quarterbacking in legal cir-
about Christopher Boyce,and Andrew Iles in Southern California about the
DaUlton Lee - two young Californians way the genial attorney provided the
who became spies for the Soviet Union government with "so. much informa-
- that led Jay to call Mr. Dougherty tion, and Mr. Dougherty's image
in the first place. The book styled Mr. .hasn't been helped by the addition
Dougherty a "brilliant lawyer" with. several weeks ago of a new co-counsel
an excellent record of acquittals, even iiithe case, criminal defense lawyer
though Mr. Boyce got a 40-year. Jerrold M. Ladar-of San Francisco.
sentence for espionage and conspiracy Mr. Dougherty says he had to supp-
after his 1981 trial. Jay was impressed ly something throughout the negotia-
enough to pay a $10,000 retainer- In
cash. - tions to .prove the genuineness of his
For the next two years, he and the client: and he also says he and Mr. I
lawyer met in such places as The Fl- Harper came close to striking a deal
ing, a small smokey bar near Mr. with the CIA along the lines of Mr.
Dougherty's office in this community . Harper's -plan, but that the Justice
50 miles from Los Angeles, to talk over , Department vetoed it. The govern-
strategy in Jay's audacious plan: he ment's'version of the case does not
wanted the government to give -him -match this account.
immunity for the sales he'd.already But ;despite the controversy and:,
completed of classified Information.. gcriticisin over Mr. Harper, who is ex-
and then cooperate in turning him Into ?' k ected :to be indicted on espionage
a double agent against the Polish intel? charges in San Francisco on Dec. 12,
ligence service, with whom he had ' Mr Dougherty maintains he did the
been dealing. right thing and he's not afraid of spy
For two years, Mr.'Dougherty was cases. "I just tell everybody. 'If you
the go-between, providing the CIAknow any double agents, send them
with descriptions of his client's actions ' around.'
and trying to negotiate the terms of a it isn't only his cheerful, gruff ir-
deal. Repeatedly, his client refused to reverence that makes Mr. Dougherty
.come forward until the-_ government stand out.-He.has never been content
promised immunity. Repeatedly, the to be a routine criminal lawyer, driv-
government insisted it had to have the ing from one -local courthouse to
name first. another. Federal criminal cases take
Unfortunately for Jay, and for Mr. him to U.S. district courts throughout
Dougherty, time ran out. Last Oct. 15, the-country, he says, and usually he
the lawyer finally learned who Jay prefers to fly his own Seneca II from
was when the authorities arrested appearance to appearance.
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He works out of his sprawling home
here, a modern structure with a red
tile roof, nestled among lemon and
olive trees in the heart of conservative
Orange County. Inside, in his office
next to the kitchen, files are spilling
off his glass-tabled desk onto the floor.
He rarely sees clients' there.
Instead, appointments are kept in
restaurants, bars or whatever cof-
feeshop is close to where the person's
case-will be heard.
A curious assortment of magazines
are scattered about his desk, including
Soviet Life, Aviation, Week and
Architectural Digest. Bookshelves
have rows of cl'runk-driving manuals
next to copies of _"The Falcon and the
Snowman" and its recently published
sequel, "The Flight of the Falcon,"
about Mr. Boyce's escape, further
crimes and the trial on bank robbery
charges where he was sentenced to
another 28 years in federal prison
(once again, he was represented by
Mr. Dougherty). The U.S. and Califor-
nia codes are in the library in the gar-
age, amidst tools and drills, on
plywood shelves supported by bricks.
N A SPARE bedroom in the rear,
I nicknamed "The Church Room," a
part-time associate works every
-day on one of Mr. Dougherty's few
civil suits, a fight by old-line members
of a Laguna Beach, Calif., congrega-
tion to regain control of their church
property from the church's new
leadership, which includes Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, the head of an Oregon
commune. The case is set for an
Orange County Superior Court trial
next June. Church of Religious
Science of Laguna Beach v. Utsava '
Rajneesh Meditation Center, 364655.
At 6-f6ot-1 with a white. flattop
haircut that recalls his days as a
Marine pilot, Mr. Dougherty may look
like he approaches his cases with the
tough precision of a drill sergeant. But
it is his secretary, Deborah Schmitz,
who keeps track of whether today's
matter is a theft or an assault by a ser-
viceman. Pursuing his hectic pace,
driving from courthouse to courthouse
in his 5-year-old Mercedes, - Mr.
Dougherty is as likely to forget a file
at the courthouse as he is to remember
the name of an obscure- case.
But if -the pace is hectic, Mr.-
Dougherty is used to it.
Mr. Dougherty came from a com-
fortable household. He developed a
flair for flying as an 18-year-old Navy
aviation cadet, and later, as a Marine.
After World War II, he returned to
Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine,
graduating in 1948.
He continued to an unremarkable
career at Cornell Law School where
the path of his grades,, he says, looked
like a sine curve. In 1950, his legal
education was interrupted for two
years when Mr. Dougherty was recal-
led to active duty during the Korean
War. He had completed a second year
of law school before he was injured
.and hospitalized for six months in
1952, when. he suffered a broken back
-and foot after his Corsair crashed into
some trees. - -
He graduated from Cornell in 1955,
five -years after he started, by then a
war hero with two distinguished flying
crosses and a chestful of air medals
and-ribbons.
Mr. Dougherty was an assistant
U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C.,
before beginning work for Sen. Ken-
neth B. Keating, R-N.Y., with the
Senate Judiciary Committee in 1959.
He moved West in December of that
,year and spent three years in the
Justice Department's Organized
Crime and Racketeering Strike Force
prosecuting Mafia members and
garment-industry racketeers before
starting private practice.
An inexperienced -young lawyer
named George Chelius brought him
into the Boyce case in 1976. Mr.
Dougherty took no fee, because it
would be interesting work, he said.
E VENTUALLY, a lawyer who
knew about Mr. Dougherty
from the Boyce case got him in-
volved in defending a Corona, Calif.,
businessman, Walter J. Spawr, and
his wife, Frances. The couple were
convicted in 1980 of secretly shipping
high-technology laser mirrors to the
Soviets in a foreign intrigue case that
evoked Flash Gordonesque images of
death rays.
"He's always had a little bit of
James Bond in him," says a former
law partner, Robert Rickles, now an
associate justice in San Bernardino
,with the California Court of Appeal.
But whether "Wild Bill," as he is
sometimes called, measures up to the
success rate of 007 - or even- of the
-Bill Dougherty. described in the
Lindsey book - is a question that gets
varying answers in the southern
California legal community.
In the Boyce case, U.S. District
Judge Robert J. Kelleher praised Mr.
Dougherty's "professional manner."
%"01N
TTR;UED
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But his ex-opponent, former Asst. U.S.
Attorney Joel Levine is not as admir-
ing. "[He's] honest and well-meaning.
There are no malicious bones in his
body. That's about the best I could
say," says Mr. Levine, now a name
partner with Stilz, Boyd, Levine &
Handzlik in Los Angeles. ("The
Falcon and the Snowman" reports
considerable personal hostility
between the two opponents in the
Boyce case, though Mr. Dougherty
denies it.)
Despite the warmth and
enthusiasm that his friends and ad-
mirers express, his handling of the
Harper affair has left Mr. Dougherty's
detractors with plenty of ammunition.
He flares, angry and defensive, at
the slightest suggestion that he should
have done a better job of shielding Mr.
Harper's identity in his negotiations
with federal investigators.
To show good faith and his client's
genuineness, Mr. Dougherty says, he
agreed that Mr. Harper would answer
two sets of 20 questions each from the
CIA. The first came in December 1981,
the second in March 1982, he says.
"They were what you'd expect," he
says. "Who did you see? What did you
take? Where did you go?"
.As a precaution, he says he
transcribed, then edited, his client's
tape-recorded answers before handing
them over to the CIA. Then he burned
the tapes. "I didn't want them around
- there might be fingerprints, or
something."
? according to Mr. Dougherty, CIA
officials atone point said the agency
intended to recommend to the Justice
Department that Mr. Harper be given
immunity. "I was ecstatic . . . the ~
CIA was going to bankroll [Mr.
Harper]. then let him keep the
proceeds. If he could get $100,000 from
the Poles for non-information, fine."
But in November 1982, negotiations
stopped. "Bam! Ffverything stopped
and the Department of Justice said
'No.' They just. took a hard-nosed,
bureaucratic attitude," Mr.
Dougherty. says.
According to Mr. Dougherty, the
stalemate stemmed from the FBI's in-
sistence that Mr. Harper give his
name before he was granted im-
munity. In the meantime, government
investigators began using the infor-
mation provided by Mr. Dougherty to
' leafn his client's identity, he says.
E SCOFFS at suggestions that
the plan backfired, and wound
up with the government using
Mr. Harper's information to uncover
his identity. Mr. Dougherty claims the
government agreed in writing that it
"would do nothing" with the informa-
tion provided by his client until June
22, 1982.
When asked the exact contents of
the government's agreement, Mr.
Dougherty reads a portion of a letter
dated June 22, 1982, to him from John
L. Martin, chief of the internal security
section -of the Department of Justice:
"As we discussed it will not be possi-
ble for the government to engage in
further discussion to reach an agree-
ment with your client regarding the ul-
timate disposition of the matter until
such time as he identifies himself.
"As mentioned in my previous let-
ter to you, I will be obligated to act on
the information in our possession if no
accommodation is reached soon."
Mr. Dougherty explains, "He [Mr.
Martin] just said it - 'will be
obligated to act.' He's speaking in the
future - he hasn't done anything yet."
When the agreement expired, Mr.
Dougherty says, he talked to Mr.
Martin and got a verbal 90-day exten-
sion.
He cites as further evidence of
their "agreement" an Aug. 9, 1982, let-
ter from Mr. Martin, reading, "My
responsibility to.national security re-
quires that I act on the information
currently in my possession, including
information provided by your client.
Accordingly, I have today turned over
all of this data for appropriate action
to the FBI and other security and in-
telligence components of the govern-
ment who have responsibility in such
matters."
The letter shows, Mr. Dougherty
says, that Mr. Martin "would seem to
be a man of his word and did nothing
before" Aug. 9-
- The two letters, says Mr.
Dougherty, are the government's
written agreement to not use the infor-
mation he was providing against his
client. "In November [1981], he told
me we'd already had over a year,"
says Mr. Dougherty. "Goddamn - I
thought that was fair. They gave us
over a year and didn't touch him."
Though assistant U.S. attorneys in-
volved in the case won't comment on it
- indeed, one of them, Asst. U.S. At-
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14
torney John Gibbons of San Francisco
has accused Mr. Dougherty in a
telegram of breaking a Northern
District of California Court Rule by
discussing the Harper, affair - the f
government's version clearly differs.
An FBI spokesman in San Francisco
dismisses as "nonsense" Mr.
Dougherty's talk of a written agree-
ment by the government not to move
against Mr. Harper when he was still
anonymous. The CIA won't comment
on the case.
At any rate, at some point in the
course of the two-year adventure, a
Polish defector identified Mr. Harper
as the source of some of the informs-
tion that Mr. Dougherty had provided
to indicate his client's authenticity. By
March' 1983, the FBI began surveil-
lance of Mr. Harper, and by May it
had tapped his phone, picking up
several conversations he had with Mr.
Dougherty, who at that point still
knew the man only as "Jay."
Two days before his client's arrest,
Justice Department officials con-
tacted Mr. Dougherty, who once again
confirmed that "Jay" was in posses- I
sion of a "stash" of secret documents.
At the mention that he might have
provided evidence against his client,
Mr. Dougherty's voice trembles with
anger. On this subject he is not the
same personable, animated,
freewheeling person. "No way did I
ever give them evidence. I acted as
the non-evidentiary go-between .
[and] only gave what my client told
me to give."
. What about the Monday-morning
quarterback notion that Mr. Harper
shouldn't have answered anything
from the government until immunity
was assured?.
"Maybe I should have - I don't
know," the lawyer says, speaking
more soflty. "But I want to keep
dialogue open . . .
Besides, he adds, "My- client
wanted me to keep trying." :~.
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