Lawyer-Diplomat Answered Adversity in Rising to the Top

Warren Christopher, the lawyer-diplomat who heads O’Melveny & Myers, made it the hard way.

Christopher, 61, was born in Scranton, N.D., a town of 300 people, and grew up during the Depression. His father, the cashier at the local bank, suffered a stroke when the bank almost collapsed in 1936.

When Christopher was 13, the family moved to California because of his father’s failing health. They settled in a bungalow court in Hollywood. His mother worked as a sales clerk and Christopher delivered newspapers.

“I carried papers for the Hollywood Citizen-News up Beachwood Canyon to the Hollywoodland sign,” Christopher recalled. “The second summer, I got a job as copy boy and started covering sports at 10 cents an inch (of copy). When I graduated from Hollywood High School, they offered me a job at $25 a week. I was close to taking it.”

Christopher, cautious in discussing almost any subject, becomes even more reticent when talking about himself.

In a 1982 commencement address on “Adversity” at the University of North Dakota, for example, Christopher made no mention of his family’s problems, speaking instead of his “warm memories of prairie sunsets and the emergence of crocuses in spring.”

“But there are not so many lessons in glad times,” he added. “Adversity is by far the better teacher. Adversity will be a part of almost all our lives. So it is not in escaping adversity, but in answering it, that our character is defined.”

Recently, in the 15th-floor office of the 383-lawyer firm he now runs, Christopher talked about the less pleasant times of his youth: “I remember going around with my father to foreclosure sales--his bank would have to sell the belongings of people he had known all his life. I think that gave me a good deal of my sympathy to people and my liberal leanings. I live simply and cautiously, and that goes back to the childhood days.”

At a personal level, Christopher projects an image of reserve. He has strong critics as well as supporters. Some see him as shy and considerate, while others view him as tough and manipulative.

“I think he’s a very devious guy,” one lawyer at a rival firm said. “He can be a ruthless son of a bitch. That’s not disparaging. He can do what has to be done.”

A different assessment comes from Patrick Lynch, one of O’Melveny’s top trial lawyers.

“My belief is he is a very decent, honest, thoughtful and considerate person with some, for him, unfortunate traits,” Lynch said. “As long as I have been around here, there has been a perception of him as secretive and manipulative. I find that unfair.”

Christopher’s response is that he is sometimes secretive, a trait he views as a necessary part of a lawyer’s job.

“I’d have to confess to playing it close to the vest most of the time,” he said. “When you’re dealing with people’s lives, I think that’s a lawyer’s obligation.”

Christopher attended Redlands University on scholarship, later transferring to USC. He graduated at 19 with a Navy commission. He spent the final months of World War II on a fleet oiler with a former USC classmate, John Ferraro, now president of the Los Angeles City Council.

“Ferraro was a good friend to have,” Christopher recalled. “I was a 140-pound, 19-year-old ensign. John was an All-American tackle on the USC football team, about 240 pounds. It was a tough crew, and he sort of looked after me.”

It was during Christopher’s Navy days that he began thinking of becoming a lawyer. A campus visit to Stanford University during a shore leave convinced him. He was editor of the first Stanford Law Review in 1949, then clerked for a year for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

“He could be devastating when he was displeased with you,” Christopher said. “I remember one time when I had failed him on something. He looked at me with those blazing blue eyes, no smile, and I still remember his words: ‘I depend on you to an extent perhaps you do not realize.’ ”

Christopher shared Douglas’ liberal views, and after joining O’Melveny, a law firm dominated by Republicans, he was quick to establish his own liberal Democratic leanings. One of his first acts as a new O’Melveny associate was to organize a letter protesting the anti-Communist crusade of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s.

In the 1950s, Christopher worked on behalf of Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, one of many former Christopher associates who praise him for his intellect and common sense.

“I regarded Christopher as the ablest man I’ve ever been associated with,” Brown said. “He’s a fact finder, objective, very persuasive and knowledgeable. If I had a difficult personal problem today, he’d still be the man to go to.”

At Brown’s request, Christopher set up the McCone Commission that studied the Watts riots of 1965 and served as its vice chairman--a role that had an effect not only on his own career but also on that of a younger generation of O’Melveny lawyers. Among them was Carlyle Hall, who worked at O’Melveny briefly in 1965 and was one of a group of liberal lawyers who later established the Center for Law in the Public Interest.

“Right after the Watts riots, Christopher had come to Harvard on a recruiting trip,” Hall said. “I was so impressed with him then that I thought, ‘This is somebody whose briefcase I could really carry around for a while.’

“Then I joined the firm while he was on the McCone Commission. He had a storefront office on 101st Street and he would walk the neighborhoods talking to residents. It was very interesting to see someone from the legal Establishment to be, first of all, caring and, second, in a position to be of some influence.”

Advice on Urban Violence

In 1967, Christopher was asked by U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark to join the Justice Department as deputy attorney general for a two-year period. One major part of his job was advising President Lyndon B. Johnson on urban violence.

“LBJ felt he could never send troops into a city without a certification from a federal official that the situation required it,” Christopher said. “He would never take the word of the local mayor. He sent Cyrus Vance and me to Detroit when it erupted. We were together in a jeep driving through the riot area the night Detroit was ablaze. The 82nd Airborne came in.”

He was sent to Los Angeles to oversee the investigation of the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and dispatched by Johnson later that year to Chicago to advise on the need for federal intervention between police and anti-war demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention.

“That was the worst night I’ve ever spent,” Christopher said. “I was at the Hilton Hotel watching what essentially was a police riot. The country tends to forget the urban riots and how tense things were then. I think that is very unfortunate.”

Christopher returned to O’Melveny in 1969, serving as one of the firm’s leading antitrust lawyers as well as president of the L.A. County Bar Assn. In 1976, however, he took another leave of absence for a four-year term as U.S. deputy secretary of state.

His nomination for the State Department post led Christopher to resign temporarily from the California Club, which had not yet amended its discriminatory policies against blacks, women or Jews. He rejoined the club when his term was over, however, a subject that Christopher approaches with even more caution than usual.

“I resigned at that time because I thought it would be embarrassing all around,” Christopher said. “I rejoined because of my friendships there. I also saw possibilities for change, which have subsequently occurred.”

As the No. 2 man in the State Department, Christopher opposed the use of force in the Iran hostage crisis. When President Jimmy Carter opted instead for an abortive rescue mission in 1980, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in protest. Christopher stayed.

He hoped to succeed Vance, but Carter thought that might bring a congressional inquiry into the failed helicopter rescue attempt. The job went to former Sen. Edmund Muskie, with Christopher getting a key role in hostage release talks.

“Sure, I was disappointed I didn’t get the job,” Christopher said. “But Oliver Wendell Holmes had a saying, ‘The U.S. is the least exclusive club in the world, but has the highest dues for membership.’ The country demands a lot of people.”

The ultimate settlement of the Iranian crisis and release of America’s 52 hostages in the final hours of the Carter Administration in January, 1981, marked the highlight of Christopher’s career.

“The last several months was almost a haze,” Christopher recalled. “When it was finally over, I was completely drained. I’d been running on empty for a long while.”

Since returning to run O’Melveny, Christopher’s chief tasks have been to streamline its business operations and expand its international practice. At 61, he is the youngest leader of the three major law firms in Los Angeles, and has four more years before reaching O’Melveny’s traditional retirement age of 65. Some partners, however, think the rules might be overlooked for Christopher.

More important than retirement is whether Christopher might leave once more for Washington if the Democrats regain the White House. He is regarded as a leading candidate for U.S. secretary of state if a Democrat is elected President in 1988.

“My bet is Christopher will stay as chairman past 65,” said William Vaughn, head of O’Melveny’s litigation department. “I can’t imagine him slowing down. Not unless he takes another high position in government. . . . He will always answer the call of the President.”

Christopher’s own leanings, he said, are to stay in Los Angeles and continue with O’Melveny.

“I don’t have any craving to go back to Washington,” he said. “I know what a cruel city that is.”

Meanwhile, Christopher’s activities go beyond running one of the city’s largest law firms. He also is president of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, vice chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and a director of Lockheed, First Interstate Bancorp and Southern California Edison Co.

Christopher stays in shape by jogging each morning at 5 a.m. near his home in Beverly Hills. He also keeps a jogging bag at O’Melveny’s Washington office, and runs along the Potomac on his regular travels there.

“My life is so full,” Christopher said. “Time is always the quantity in shortage.”