Fred Thompson Retrospective Excerpts from Fred Thompson Looks Back by Henry Walker, which ran in the February 2003 issue of the Nashville Bar Journal. On January 3, just three hours after his U.S. Senate term expired, private citizen Fred Thompson sat down for a wide ranging interview with the Nashville Bar Journal. Arriving with no entourage, Thompson said he’s now “just a lawyer” again. [Editor’s Note: Fred Thompson passed away on November 1, at the age of 73, from recurrence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Diagnosed in 2004, he had been in remission until last year. He is survived by his wife and four children.] A native of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, Thompson graduated from Memphis State in 1964 and Vanderbilt Law School in 1967. After two years of private practice in Lawrenceburg, Thompson was hired as an Assistant United States Attorney in Nashville. In 1973 and 1974, he was minority counsel to the Watergate Committee and later served as special counsel to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Thompson was elected to the Senate in 1994 to fill Al Gore’s unexpected term and was re-elected in 1996. He has also acted in a number of movies and is currently a cast member on NBC’s “Law & Order.” Q: How did a young lawyer from Lawrenceburg end up becoming an assistant U.S. Attorney in Nashville? A: Well, I I was one of a handful of Republican lawyers, at that time. Q: Charlie Anderson had just been named U.S. Attorney, right? A: That’s right. I had, the year before, managed, if you want to call it that, a campaign for a fellow by the name of John T. Williams who ran against Ray Blanton for Congress. That was my first introduction to Mr. Blanton, you might say…Congressman Blanton beat us pretty bad. But that gave me, I guess, some [Republican] credentials. And all
of the other young practicing lawyers in Tennessee were just about all Democrats. Q: What had you been doing in Lawrenceburg? Just whatever walked in the door? A: Anything I could. General Sessions, occasionally I would get to Circuit Court. In fact, Charlie Trost was practicing in Columbia at that time and I tried my first case against Charlie. Q: Who won? A: Hung jury. But I was the plaintiff and he was representing the defendant, and, as I recall, I got a little insurance money out of it after the trial. Q: Then you came to Nashville and you were an assistant U.S. Attorney for how long? A: Three years. Q: Did you like it? A: I always said it was the best job I ever had. In some respects, that still applies. Q: That’s quite a statement. A: It was a wonderful thing for me. At that time, we had a real small office. Seems like there were seven or eight assistants at that time. Again, partially by the luck of the draw, I got thrown into the fray and got to try a lot of major cases that we had there. A lot of the minor ones, too. I got initiated by Judge Frank Gray, and I use that term advisedly. I was thrown into the lion’s den and managed to learn what it took to survive. Q: Did you get chewed out a few times? A: Oh, unmercifully. But after a while, I apparently learned how to behave and never had any trouble there for the last two and a half or so years there. In 1972, I left the U.S. Attorney’s office and hung out my shingle here in Nashville. I was an association with A.B. Neil and Vince Wehby. While I did that, I was the Middle Tennessee Manager, socalled. (I say so-called because nobody ever managed Howard Baker.) But I was the Middle Tennessee Manager for Howard Baker’s re-election campaign in 1972. After the campaign was over, Watergate
came along and I went to Washington in February of ’73. Q: Even for somebody who has done everything that you’ve done, your work on the Watergate Committee had to be one of your most exciting experiences. Especially for a guy who was what, in his early thirties? A: Thirty, as a matter of fact. There is no question about that. But it was kind of like you know being boiled with the temperature being turned up gradually. You didn’t realize that it was happening. When I went up there, none of us expected it to be much. We didn’t expect it to take very long to do. Howard Baker included. And when we got there things started happening, kind of slowly, but one right after another, and then it built up to something. I guess I really didn’t fully appreciate the significance until the first day of hearings when we went into the room and everybody in the world was there or represented. By that time we were so busy that it just became another case, you know, and you were more interested in trying to get the facts together and figuring out what you were going to do the next day than thinking about the maelstrom that you were in the midst of. Q: It seems to me that the Watergate Committee displayed more of a bipartisan concern for getting to the facts than was shown more recently when your own special committee was trying to investigate campaign finances abuses. A: There is no question about that. In fact I would take that a step further and say that the days of a bipartisan inquiry involving a President are over. I don’t think that could happen again. The times are different. The media is different. And the other thing that was different in ’73 were the personalities of Sam Erwin and Howard Baker. I must say I am a little prejudiced in this respect. But mostly Howard Baker. When the investigation is of one party and the President is the other, the person who really determines the course of the investigation is the chief minority person. In Howard Baker’s case, he basically let the chips fall where they may. He did his cont. on page 25 Nashville Bar Journal - November 2015
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