When a reputation seems soiled beyond repair only the toughest stain remover will do.
Enter John C. Danforth, back from a recent effort to stop civil war in Africa in time to help battered accounting firm Andersen stay alive. Neither task is for the faint of heart.
“I don’t know why they asked me to do it,” he says, unwilling to admit to what others are all too willing to say. When your credibility and integrity are in doubt, it’s time to bring in someone whose character can’t be questioned.
That’s why Andersen turned to “Saint Jack” (a nickname he tolerates from friends and shrugs away the rest of the time), the ordained Episcopalian priest and former three-time Republican U.S. senator from Missouri, to examine a document-retention policy that itself seems to have been shredded as federal investigators close in on the firm’s audits of Enron Corp. Danforth, the special prosecutor who investigated charges of an FBI coverup in the fatal Waco, Tex., standoff, will review the company’s internal investigation and recommend disciplinary action.
Danforth was joined last week by another Mr. Clean, Paul A. Volcker Jr., the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as Andersen draws from both ends of the political spectrum in an attempt to clear its name. Volcker, a Democrat, will organize and lead an independent oversight board that will monitor the company’s efforts to raise the standards that guide its auditing operations and business practices.
“The reason I got involved,” Volcker told the New York Times, “is that Andersen is in big trouble and they were looking for someone to sprinkle some holy water on them.”
While Volcker is a relative newcomer to the sanitizing process — his most noticeable act was to lend his prestige to the recent effort to get Swiss banks to return bank deposits to Jewish families who had lost them in World War II — Danforth is an old hand at it.
And, his good name went to work for Andersen even before he did, slipping into a press release that the company released while he was still in the Sudan as President Bush’s special envoy. Andersen officials continued to invoke the Danforth brand name frequently during recent House hearings, wielding it ritualistically, like a crucifix in a vampire’s path.
“As soon as I was asked, I thought this was really going to be interesting,” says Danforth, a practicing attorney who, despite being born into the Ralston-Purina fortune, never has considered leisure an alternative to constant motion. “It’s obviously important, something of great national moment and importance for the working of our economy.”
Whatever the accounting firm’s reasons for bringing him on, Danforth is certain they know the ground rules: “I think that it’s clearly understood they’re not hiring me to be a cheerleader; they’re hiring me to give them my judgment.”
And as anyone who followed his investigation of the deaths of 80 Branch Davidians at Waco knows, if something doesn’t sit right with Danforth — even if it’s technically legal — he’s not going to mince words or hold back on recommendations.
On the short list
That’s why Danforth holds a spot on the short list, the one with the names that governments and companies turn to when the stuff hits the fan and the “who” does the probing becomes as important as “what” they come up with.
“He’s the sort of person you think about when you want to have a special investigation. There’s a few people you think about like that in the country — most of them have public experience in addition to being lawyers,” says former U.S. Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell, a member of that small fraternity. “Another one is from St. Louis, Bill Webster (former director of the CIA and FBI) and another one would be (former Sen.) George Mitchell.”
Bell calls it “gravitas” — not in the Dick Cheney sense but more along the lines of John J. McCloy, a legendary attorney, adviser to presidents and establishment figure whose “wise man” credentials included having been military governor of Germany and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. “Over and above whatever you were working on, you always were aware of the public interest,” Bell explains. He sees that same quality in Danforth.
As it turns out, Andersen now has two former special prosecutors, as well as a former Fed chief, working on its behalf. Danforth, a partner in the St. Louis law firm of Bryan Cave, is collaborating with James M. Cole, a partner from the firm’s Washington office. Cole served as deputy chief of the public integrity division of the Department of Justice in the first Bush administration and later was special counsel to the U.S. House Ethics Committee during its Newt Gingrich investigation.
A man of integrity
“They’re looking for a guy who has total integrity,” explains Danforth’s friend and former Senate colleague Alan K. Simpson, the Wyoming Republican. “You may not always agree with Jack but he’s real. That’s why Janet Reno hunted him down so he could do the Waco investigation. He did that with minimal bitching and howling and shrieking from the right and the left.”
That integrity comes paired with an essential quality for Simpson — trust. “People have to trust you and people trust Jack,” he says. Simpson saw it firsthand during the contentious hearings when Clarence Thomas was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court. Danforth, who, as attorney general of Missouri, hired Thomas as an assistant attorney general, was his fiercest supporter. Simpson recalls, “I heard two senators say [to Danforth], `I still have the gravest doubts but because of what you told me about him I’m going to vote for him’ and that swung it.”
And yet if Danforth has a blot on his record, it’s from the Thomas hearings, when he defended his protege from any and all accusations, using his own record as a shield and his own character as a bargaining tool.
Matter of loyalty
Former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois thinks the Thomas episode “was a case where he (Thomas) had worked for Jack and Jack felt a loyalty to his staff, which I completely understand. I am not sure Jack had a real sense of how conservative Clarence Thomas is.”
But Simon is unequivocal about Danforth’s character. “In terms of integrity, he’s rock solid,” he says, adding “the combination of Jack Danforth and Paul Volcker is pretty hard to beat.”
The Thomas case is far from the only time Danforth has puzzled observers, allies and foes by taking unexpected positions. Firmly anti-abortion in most of his voting while a senator, he voted against the cut-off of federal funding for clinics that offered abortion counseling. He spoke out against the proposed flag-burning amendment and, going against the grain of his party, voted against the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In a 1991 column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, veteran political reporter Jo Mannies recalled a 50-page speech opposing federally mandated school prayer that Danforth gave in 1982. “Like him or not,” she wrote, “you have to admit Danforth charts his own course.”
Another of Danforth’s successes isn’t viewed very charitably in some quarters. His 1976 statewide victory in the race for Missouri attorney general started a resurgence for the Republican Party. During his 8 years as attorney general, Danforth adroitly used the powers of his office to employ other promising Republicans with law degrees. That pipeline produced, besides Thomas, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft (a two-term governor who became a U.S. senator), U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond (a two-term governor) and former Federal Communications Chairman Alfred Sikes.
Eric Holder was the deputy attorney general responsible for working with Danforth during the Waco investigation. “There are very few people who come out of Washington these days whom others universally respect,” Holder says. “These are people who, if they say it’s so, it doesn’t matter if there’s an `R’ or a `D’ after their name.”
Jack Danforth has two Bibles — the traditional one and the family one, a slender 133-page text written by his charismatic grandfather 71 years ago. Called “I Dare You!” and laced with spiritual references, the maroon volume by Ralston-Purina founder William H. Danforth is a guide for living an involved, successful life. Together the two books form a formidable foundation.
The youngest of four children, Danforth grew up with not only all the advantages money can buy but those beyond price, like love and encouragement. But his parents weren’t quite sure how to take it when Jack, who seemed destined for a career in law and politics, instead emerged from Princeton University in 1958 determined to make a career in theology. Numerous talks didn’t shake his resolve and he enrolled at Yale Divinity School. He soon realized, though, that however much he embraced religion, it wouldn’t fill his life. Instead of shucking it aside, he enrolled in Yale Law School, graduating in 1963 with degrees in both fields.
The two, religion and the law, have guided his life ever since. While a senator, Danforth conducted weekly services at St. Albans in Washington, and now, in St. Louis, he serves as honorary canon at Christ Church Cathedral. At times, he’s called upon to mix his roles, as when he delivered the homily for U.S. Sen. John Heinz, his good friend, who was killed in a plane crash in 1991, and again for Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham last summer.
When Danforth returned to his native St. Louis in 1995, he was eager to blend religion and the law. His dual status as senator and priest earned him the nickname “St. Jack” from colleagues, a term quickly appropriated for its “holier-than-thou” sound by the media and political opponents. Slate writer David Plotz Simpson recently used it liberally in a piece that called Danforth “one of America’s free-lance holy men” and “Andersen’s plaster saint.”
Simpson swears the term started out affectionately. “It’s like the phrase `son of a bitch’ — it can be a term of absolute endearment or fighting words. `St. Jack’ was a fun term every time I heard it used.”
Danforth doesn’t agree with the image associated with the name.
“I think it’s just silly. It really is silly. I think it’s a little bit of a putdown. It says this guy is sanctimonious, preachy, this is the `Reverend Jack Danforth.’ In my own mind that’s not how I see myself. That’s why I think it’s silly.”
Danforth impressed veteran federal prosecutor Edward L. Dowd Jr., who worked with him on the Waco investigation, with his approach. “I think it’s almost instinctive with him and maybe it’s his training as a minister as well,” says Dowd. “He develops a plan, has very specific goals and sticks to the plan although he’s flexible.”
Thoroughness
Danforth didn’t change the minds of those convinced there was a coverup when he exonerated the FBI for the deaths in Waco in the preliminary report issued in July 2000 and again, in the final report submitted Nov. 8, 2000, but he didn’t drop it there. Gravely concerned by details uncovered during the investigation about the behavior of the FBI and the willingness of the American public to believe the worst, he went to Capitol Hill and laid it on the line. “Lack of openness and candor caused and then complicated my investigation. And, far more important, lack of openness and candor undermined public confidence in government,” he said, calling for nothing less than top-down reform.
His careful approach isn’t always appreciated. In “Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election,” author Jeffrey Toobin tells the tale of how the Bush team turned to Danforth to lead the legal fight for the presidency. Uncomfortable with the possible ramifications for Bush should he lose, he said he would have to talk with his prospective client before agreeing to the job. The Bush brain trust agreed at first, then called to say he wasn’t needed after all. Someone who questioned the strategy wasn’t going to be enough of a true believer to lead the charge.
He is, however, playing a role in election reform as a member of both the National Commission on Federal Election Reform and an NAACP panel on the issue — just two of the many task forces and committees he serves on. “I like to be active and to be involved in interesting things and hopefully to be helpful, so that’s why I’m inclined to take things on. I’m 65 but I don’t really want to retire. I’d rather do things that have some purpose to them,” he explains. “It’s very important to me to be making a contribution, not just sitting on the beach.”
