Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (32 page)

The real drama began with the “Patti Fink” and “Anne Williams” communications. It is such unanticipated responses to an article that, in my experience, are the true reward of the writer, transcending even the pleasure of seeing one’s work in print and getting paid for it. (The Dove, in fact, paid off twice and I recovered the cost of the dinner many times over.) For days after the editor of
New York
sent me the Fink/Williams communications, and told me of his conversation with Brenda Johnson, I lived in a state of concentrated excitement as clue after clue emerged: the New York Postmaster’s identification of Med-Den as owner of Postage Meter No. 1147184; the discovery through “Patti Fink” of the whereabouts and occupation of “Jane Porter”; the link between Med-Den and TSOTD....

Having verified the Dovish connection with the mystery postage meter, I embarked on the time-consuming job of tracking down and interviewing “Patti Fink,” “Jane Porter,” and Brenda Johnson. In all, I must have spent four or five hours on the telephone with those wailing ladies. “Patti” was clearly an innocent; “Jane” sounded like a sad sack, an underling ineptly trying her best in this, her first job, to curry favor with the boss, and hardly a person worth contending with. Not wishing to cause these two sufferers further misery, I gave them fictitious names in the article. But I was not about to let that self-styled “smart young businessperson” Brenda Johnson off the hook. Her name and that of her public relations agency are authentic.

While generally refusal of the principal to talk creates serious obstacles for the investigator, sometimes, as in the case of Dr. Santo, silence may prove to be golden.

The Dove saga got quite a play on television; it was discussed on the Dick Cavett and Phil Donahue shows, and on some local programs.
New York
kept the joke going for a while in their Competition page. A prize-winning entry to the competition in which readers were asked for TV pilots not likely to be seen on the air:
“The Silent Dr. Santo
. In this new adventure series, detective/gourmet Jess Mitford searches for the exclusive and mysterious Dr. Santo. Clues lead her to a once-fashionable East Side aviary.” And another, in a competition asking readers for an example of bad news (such as, “Looks like ringworm to me, Farrah”): “Miss Mitford, we’re calling to confirm your table reservation....”

WAITING FOR O’HARA

NEW WEST /
January, 1978

Is he in heaven, is he in hell
,

That demn’d, illusive Pimpernel?

The Scarlet Pimpernel must have been one of the most seductive, attractive men in all literature to devotees of Baroness Orczy’s novels; incomparably daring, resourceful, his motives unmixed with base desires for worldly wealth, Jack O’Hara is such a legendary figure to me. Money means little or nothing to him; he probably lives on a mere pittance. He pursues his curious path in life only for the joy of it; for sheer pleasure, not profit. And what a tightrope he walks! Dangers stare him in the face, but he never flinches. A brilliant researcher with a mind like a steel trap, he devours and analyzes facts with the rapidity of a computer.

To set the scene for this Gothic tale: It was a dark and stormy night—or, rather, it was actually a bright mid-drought November, 1977, morning in San Francisco—when attorney Dave Pesonen’s secretary dashed to the courthouse and dragged her boss out of a hearing. A whispered conference ensued. There was a message, she said, from Jack O’Hara, a printer who was employed at the P. G. & E. print shop. O’Hara had just received an emergency, top-secret order from P. G. & E.’s Los Angeles investigator concerning Pesonen’s client, who had a major lawsuit pending against P. G. & E. O’Hara was instructed to print up a confidential report on the client, compiled in 1972, including logs of a nine-day wiretap of his telephone plus reams of correspondence with B. B. D. & O., the advertising agency that represents P. G. & E. O’Hara could not be reached on the print shop phone—that would be too risky—but he would call Pesonen’s office back from a pay phone within the hour.

Pesonen, hardly able to believe his good fortune (for this is the sort of documentation of an opponent’s skulduggery that every lawyer dreams of), excused himself from the hearing and rushed back to his office to await O’Hara’s call, which came through as promised. “He sounded very overwrought,” Pesonen told me. “He’d worked for P. G. & E. for fifteen years; he didn’t think much of my client but he did feel that this kind of unauthorized, undercover surveillance was dirty pool. I said I’d love to have a copy of the report—how could I get it? Could I bring it to my office at night Xerox it? He became even more agitated—no, that was out of the question. He could do it for me on the P. G. & E. copying machine, but there was a problem about the paper. The machine takes a special kind of roll—Kodak Triple A— which is only carried by certain suppliers. I wouldn’t know where to find it, he said; he’d have to buy it himself as the paper in the shop is closely inventory-controlled. He would need two rolls, costing eighteen dollars and twenty-five cents each. It would have to be done that very day because he had been ordered to destroy the plates. He had time off that afternoon to go to the ophthalmologist, would meet me and collect the money for the paper.”

They met on a street corner, and at O’Hara’s suggestion went for a quick cup of coffee for which Pesonen paid. “He’s a rugged-looking man with black hair, dressed in workmen’s corduroy pants and a quilted windbreaker. He said, ‘Excuse these,’ pointing to his clothes, ‘I change when I get home in the evening.’

“His whole demeanor was nervous, distraught; he had a bead of sweat on his upper lip. Over coffee he kept repeating, ‘Please don’t get me involved, I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve a wife and children to consider—but you wouldn’t
believe
what’s in this report.’ I gave him thirty-six dollars and fifty cents. We arranged to meet at 6 p.m. for him to turn over the document. I waited until 6:45, thinking of all sorts of reasons why he had been delayed—a machine breakdown? A traffic jam? He never showed.

“The next morning there was no call from him. At noon, my secretary called P. G. & E.—they’d never heard of O’Hara. I called Dave Fechheimer, a private eye who used to work for Hal Lipset [the latter-day Sam Spade who played himself in
The Conversation
], and started telling the story. David said, ‘Don’t go any further! I know the rest of it. He’s done it to any number of lawyers, including Bob Treuhaft and Doris Walker.”’

Now for a flashback. A smoggy October, 1973, morning at San Jose State University where I am working in the unlikely capacity of Distinguished Professor of Sociology—and am locked in battle with the university authorities because of my refusal to be fingerprinted. (That, of course, is another story; see my article “My Short and Happy Life as a Distinguished Professor,”
Atlantic
, October, 1974.) My husband, Bob Treuhaft, whose law firm is handling my case against the university, calls me, his voice edged with suppressed excitement. He’s just had a phone call from a printer in San Francisco who has been given a rush, confidential order by the state university trustees—some five hundred pages of scurrilous information about the subversive background of Jessica Mitford! The printer makes it clear he has no sympathy for J.M.’s political outlook, on the contrary; but he does feel the trustees are dealing from the bottom of the deck. He is willing to print an extra copy of the material on his own time, but would need to buy special paper, cost thirty-six dollars.

Somebody from Hal Lipset’s office is meeting him at this very minute with the thirty-six dollars, Bob tells me exultantly; by evening, we shall have this extraordinary evidence of how low the trustees have sunk in their mad determination to remove me from the campus. By next morning, their dirty dealings will be front-page news in every paper in the state! ... But by next morning tails are between legs. The less said about this embarrassing lapse of judgment by lawyers and investigators the better, we all agree; particularly since it develops that Bob’s partner, Doris Walker, had been hoist by the selfsame petard in 1971, when she was counsel for Angela Davis in the celebrated kidnap-murder case. That time, the trap had been baited in Los Angeles with the usual promise to deliver a sensational report of illegally procured wiretap evidence.

An understandable amnesia shrouds the details of these earlier cases; Doris Walker could not remember too much about her meeting with the printer, but she does remember making every effort to find him: “When he failed to appear, I called Hal Lipset and told him to look for the man, as it was crucial for the defense to get this wiretap report. Hal took all the information and checked with every print shop in the area—nobody had heard of O’Hara. If he had produced the document,” she added wistfully, “that would have been the end of the case—it would have tainted the whole prosecution, they’d have been forced to drop it.”

My curiosity aroused by Pesonen’s recent experience, I called Hal Lipset’s erstwhile associate, Dave Fechheimer. Between them he and Lipset have been consulted about at least ten O’Hara jobs over the past several years, and have heard about others in casual conversations with lawyers. O’Hara’s operation is statewide; he turns up in Salinas, Los Angeles, Fresno, San Diego, the San Joaquin Valley, the Bay Area. “But he doesn’t confine his business to lawyers,” Fechheimer told me. “In just one weekend I got calls from the owners of three athletic leagues—North American Soccer, the roller derby, and a hockey league—each with the same story: O’Hara had confidential documentation that others in the league were plotting against the owner. He’d say, ‘I have wiretaps of your phone, showing they are trying to get evidence to push you out.’ He’s terribly well informed, a very shrewd guy.”

Forward to Hal Lipset.

“So O’Hara’s latest victim is Dave Pesonen, who met him on November 29th?” I asked.

“You’re wrong!” said Lipset triumphantly. “He’s struck again. Just last week I got an urgent call from the secretary of a well-known lawyer; she sounded frantic—‘We’ve got to
find
this man!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s printing up some immensely important secret documents about our client, I gave him the money for the paper....’ I said, ‘Wait a minute; did he happen to mention that he doesn’t like your client but the state is doing something wrong?’ She was completely flabbergasted—I was repeating his exact words.”

The lawyer, Ephraim Margolin, is representing Dr. Josette Escamilla Mondanaro, former assistant director of the California Drug Abuse program, fired by Governor Brown ostensibly for using “an eleven-letter word” in a letter written on state stationery. “The governor concedes she is highly qualified,” said Margolin, “and that the real reason for her dismissal is her ‘sexual preferences.’ At the pretrial hearing in Sacramento on December 5th, I made a strong statement accusing the governor of discrimination and political maneuvering in his firing of Dr. Mondanaro, and said I was saving detailed substantiation of these charges for the trial. This was reported in the Sacramento newspapers and on local TV.

“The next day, December 6th, I was in San Jose on another case and got a call from my secretary, Sondra Rosen, in San Francisco. She had a printer, O’Hara, on the other line; he was doing some work for the Central Committee of the Democratic Party. He had a two-hundred-and-eighty-eight-page report, much of which was censored out, leaving a hundred and thirty pages. The report dealt with Dr. Mondanaro’s case; it contained letters from Tony Kline, Bert Coffey, Jerry Brown—all discussing the possible impact of my client’s case on Brown’s re-election and future political career. O’Hara was instructed to make five copies of the censored report and destroy the plates. He would try to make us a copy of the unexpurgated version—he couldn’t guarantee anything, wanted no money, just enough to buy two reams of special paper at eighteen dollars and twenty-five cents a ream. He met Sondra that day for coffee—
she
paid for the coffee! They agreed to meet at the same place at 5:30 p.m....” Margolin added, his voice shot through with pain, “The high-to-low feeling O’Hara creates for a lawyer, from highest hopes to the eventual letdown, is unconscionable. I felt
very
downcast.”

Over to Sondra Rosen: “I met O’Hara at 1:30 at the entrance to Chinatown Gate. He’s average height, stocky, fortyish, blue-collar type, dirty jagged fingernails, glasses, square face. He was wearing blue pants, a blue shirt with white piping, and a sports jacket. He said ‘Excuse my work clothes. I change when I get home’—and come to think of it, those
are
his work clothes! He had sounded fairly nervous on the phone and was
very
nervous when I met him. His upper lip was perspiring. I could almost feel him sweating profusely. When I gave him the thirty-six dollars and fifty cents, he said he’d forgotten to ask me for the sales tax, and that he would bill us for that later!”

“Did he volunteer much information?” I asked Sondra Rosen.

“Oh, yes, lots—he had so much inside information, he named names that he couldn’t have found in the newspapers. One name was not in
any
record, that’s what sold us for sure.”

Armed now with a fairly comprehensive picture of both O’Hara’s
modus operandi
and his physical appearance, I started calling Bay Area investigators and lawyers whose cases had attracted widespread media attention. While some—including such luminaries as Melvin Belli, Sheldon Otis, Ed Merrill, and the Hallinan clan—disclaimed any knowledge of the phantom printer, I did hit pay dirt with astonishing frequency.

Lee Borden, an Oakland private eye with Central Investigations, knows of three East Bay O’Hara jobs in the past year, two pulled on lawyers and one involving a large developer. “I can’t give you any details because the people who’ve been had don’t want it known,” he said; but he did vouchsafe that O’Hara had told all three victims that “he is a family man, has two children, wants no publicity, would donate his time to printing up the material in the interests of justice if money for the paper was forthcoming.”