of 1964. He investigated the murders of three civil
gate tapes. It was the first time a subpoena had been
rights activists, what became infamously known as
served to a sitting president in American history.
“Mississippi Burning,” as well as a murder case in
Lenzner was serving as assistant chief council on the
Perry County, Mississippi, and the bloody attacks on
Senate Watergate Committee that prompted the pres-
marchers in Selma, Alabama. When the Civil Rights
ident’s resignation. “Watergate was extraordinary in
Act of 1965 passed, Lenzner collaborated with local
terms of its breadth and depth of inappropriate and
police to prevent the KKK from attacking black vot-
improper behavior,” Lenzner says today. “[But] it
ers. “There were predictions of blood in the streets,”
was probably the best and maybe last nonpartisan
he says. “I was trying to get African Americans to
committee hearing of any controversial nature that
vote in different areas where they had never voted be-
will ever take place in the United States.”
fore.” As a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer from New York City defending civil rights in the most racist
Watergate would be the first in a long list of headline-
corners of the country, Lenzner emerged from the
grabbing cases that made Lenzner one of the most
South a tough-nosed investigator who was not eas-
feared men in politics. Right here in Massachusetts,
ily intimidated. This fierce doggedness became his
he and his firm, Investigative Group International,
stock-in-trade.
which he founded in 1984, were hired by the late Ted Kennedy to investigate his opponent, Mitt Romney,
At twenty-nine years old, Lenzner was hired by Don-
in the 1994 senate election. Lenzner dug up dirt from
ald Rumsfeld, who was working in the Nixon White
Romney’s time at Bain Capital, and the rising can-
House. He and Rumsfeld became quick friends: “We
didate lost his slim lead and eventually the election.
were brothers instantly. He was a Princeton wres-
Ironically, when Bain Capital publically criticized
tler, I was a Harvard football player, and we just
Kennedy for employing “dirty tactics” by hiring a
clicked.” This friendship, however, didn’t stop the
private investigator, the press discovered that Bain
young lawyer from personally handing a subpoena
had in fact also hired Lenzner’s firm just a few years
to Rumsfeld’s boss, Richard Nixon, four years later,
prior. Of course, the press’s discovery came with a
demanding that the president turn over the Water-
little help from Lenzner himself.