The King of Controversy : Once, William Kunstler epitomized movement lawyers: fighting for civil rights, against Vietnam. He hasn’t changed much since then. But his clients have.

As he drove down a darkened highway into Manhattan one night, William M. Kunstler clicked on the radio and learned that he was dead.

“The body of famed radical attorney William Kunstler was found in his home this afternoon, an apparent suicide,” the announcer said. “We’ll be gathering reaction from the political world as this story develops.”

Intrigued, Kunstler turned up the volume and heard more details of his life and untimely death. The report was only corrected hours later, with the news that one of his nephews with the same name had killed himself instead.

“I guess they were guilty of wishful thinking,” Kunstler cracks, recalling the bizarre 1976 broadcast. “Some folks don’t hide it very well.”

It wasn’t the first or last time that America’s most prominent left-wing lawyer has been written off for dead. For years, his bushy sideburns and abrasive politics have seemed as dated as the 1960s themselves, his flamboyant courtroom style a throwback to earlier, more innocent times.

Once, Kunstler was the king of movement lawyers. Brash, self-serving and often brilliant, he epitomized a generation of white, middle-class attorneys who raised hell over civil rights, police brutality and the Vietnam War. Best known for his role in the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial of 1969, Kunstler joined with such lawyers as Charles Garry, Gerald Lefcourt, Leonard Weinglass and Ramsey Clark in a saber-rattling crusade against Fortress Amerika.

Now 75, Kunstler hasn’t changed much. But his clients have. He used to represent people like Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden--radicals with national followings--yet lately he’s become the pariah’s attorney of choice. A man who turns terrorists, rapists and murderers into political causes celebres.

It’s brought him new life in the ‘90s, as well as scathing criticism. Indeed, Vanity Fair dubbed him “The Most Hated Lawyer in America,” and there’s no shortage of pundits who call him a hypocrite. But Kunstler couldn’t care less.

“My agenda is the same as 25 years ago,” he insists. “It’s just that these are rougher times and the folks I deal with now aren’t the same.”

In recent years, Kunstler has handled clients ranging from El Sayyid Nosair--the man accused of murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane--to Larry Davis, a black man charged with killing four men and wounding six New York cops. He defended Yusef Salaam, one of several youths who participated in the rape and attack on the Central Park jogger, and he represented mob killer John Gotti.

This fall, he’ll defend Colin Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant who killed six people and wounded 19 in a wild shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad. Kunstler plans an insanity defense and has sparked a national controversy by suggesting that “black rage” triggered Ferguson’s attack.

“Ever since the Chicago trial, I realized that America’s criminal justice system is bankrupt,” says Kunstler, his trademark bifocals perched on a mane of unruly hair. “My focus is on people who can least defend themselves. On African Americans, on followers of Islam, who are on the margins of society. These folks have a constitutional right to a lawyer like anyone else.”

Until recently, he represented three of 13 men charged with plotting to blow up the United Nations and other New York City landmarks. Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman--the alleged ringleader--has sought his services, as have three of the four Muslims convicted earlier this year of bombing the World Trade Center.

The New York conspiracy trial might have given him his biggest platform yet. But U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey removed Kunstler’s law firm from the case last week, citing a conflict of interest. Two defendants he once represented in the matter now have different attorneys, Mukasey ruled, and it would be ethically difficult for the lawyer to cross-examine them as witnesses.

Kunstler, who expected the decision, blasted Mukasey for caving in to government pressure, adding: “The state has wanted to kick our asses off this case so bad, they could taste it. They just can’t keep up with me.”

He’s come a long way from his days as a quiet suburban attorney, and Kunstler celebrates the odyssey in “My Life as a Radical Lawyer” (Birch Lane Press), a provocative new autobiography. As he sees it, there’s an ideological line running from the streets of Chicago in 1969 to the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

The argument baffles many friends, who view Kunstler’s evolution with dismay. Yet they seem just as concerned for the future of progressive politics. What happened to him, in a sense, reflects the lack of direction on the American left.

“He’s a mirror of the times, because the ‘60s was an era of hope and change,” says Lynn Stewart, an attorney who’s worked with Kunstler. “As that disappears you get involved with things that aren’t as pure. You make excuses and see political righteousness in cases where it’s not quite so clear.”

It hasn’t made him rich. Kunstler could have cashed in on his celebrity but instead earns $100,000 annually, working out of an office in his Greenwich Village home. Along with Ron Kuby, a ponytailed 37-year-old disciple, he handles many cases pro bono and only rarely takes on cash-rich clients.

“There is no need to say, ‘Who is Mr. Kunstler?’ ” wrote Mohammed Salameh, one of four men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center, in a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals asking that Kunstler be named his lawyer. “He is as a mountain on the ground. I think all lawyers are kids compared to him.”

*

Outside New York City, however, Kunstler has fallen off the media radar screen. These days, some folks are amazed he’s even alive when they run into him, reacting as if they’d seen a ghost. Tall, garrulous and still bristling with indignation, he remains every prosecutor’s worst nightmare: a smooth-talking lefty who gets maximum press for his political clients.

“Bill Kunstler has never been effective by the standards of the Harvard Law Review,” says Norman Dorsen, former chief of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He’s been very effective, however, as a radical lawyer. You just want to tell him that it’s not 1969 anymore. People can’t live in a time warp.”

Yet it’s unavoidable, when his very name conjures up a trip down memory lane: To the South, where he bailed out freedom riders. To Chicago, where his seven clients were acquitted of conspiring to disrupt the 1968 Democratic convention. To Attica, where he counseled inmates during the 1971 uprising. To Wounded Knee, where he joined Native Americans in a tense standoff with FBI agents.

His friends and clients in those years read like a Who’s Who of change and upheaval, including Lenny Bruce, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the Berrigan Brothers and Jack Ruby. Even his worst enemies concede Kunstler’s place in the history books.

But he can never get enough recognition. By his own admission, the aging lawyer has an insatiable craving for approval, even from strangers.

“How did I do?” he asks a frail woman in a wheelchair, who’s just heard him talk about crime prevention at a Connecticut event. “Was I OK today?” Seconds later, he asks the same question of other startled listeners.

Narcissism is an occupational disease among lawyers. Yet Kunstler has a conflicting impulse as well--an instinct for controversy that offends many. The two spirits have been at war in him for years, with disastrous results.

“There’s an odd hunger in him,” says ACLU colleague Henry Schwarzchild. “I don’t think Bill has any ideology as such. But he has a powerful need to make waves, to constantly get in your face. And he pays the price.”

*

Since 1980, Kunstler has received a stream of death threats and obscene calls. Gunman have fired at his office and demonstrators have marched in front of his home. He’s been beaten up, jailed and cited by judges for contempt.

By now, friends wonder why he bothers. Kunstler is a cultured man who writes sonnets in his spare time and brings his wife breakfast in bed. He has two teen-age daughters from a second marriage, a busy lecture schedule and a film career with credits in movies by Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Ron Howard.

Shouldn’t he begin to close down the office early and relax?

“It’s time to say goodby,” says a New York State Supreme Court judge, who dismisses Kunstler as an anachronism. New York Daily News columnist Jim Sleeper calls him a “public fraud” over the Ferguson case, and Bronx Dist. Atty. Paul Gentile attacks him as a racist for excluding whites from criminal juries.

“This man ran out of causes a long time ago,” says attorney Alan Dershowitz, a frequent critic. “And he’s veered into dubious areas.”

As the attacks mount, friends stress Kunstler’s integrity. Gerald Lefcourt, once a prominent left-wing attorney and now a criminal defense lawyer, says his colleague had it easier 30 years ago, when the issues were simpler.

“He was doing God’s work,” Lefcourt says. “It was important.”

But memories are short. Some Jewish critics suggest that Kunstler, who is Jewish, has deliberately sought out Muslim terrorists as clients. They’re angry that he got Nosair acquitted in the 1990 murder of Meir Kahane, suggesting he couldn’t possibly believe his client was innocent.

“Listen,” Kunstler snaps, “they called me a nigger-lover down south when I worked with civil rights activists, and now up north they call me a self-hating Jew. Believe me, this is one Jew who loves himself.”

*

On that much, most agree. Kunstler’s vanity is legendary, and it fills the chapters of his new book. For 609 pages, the author lets his enemies have it.

He calls Dershowitz reprehensible for representing Leona Helmsley, and criticizes John and Robert Kennedy as power-mad, saying their deaths were in some ways good for the country. Angered that Marlon Brando removed him from the legal team defending his son, Christian, Kunstler ridicules the Los Angeles attorney who replaced him--Robert Shapiro, now representing O.J. Simpson--as “a wheeler-dealer . . . not really a trial lawyer.”

Beyond gossip, the book relates Kunstler’s own story in rich detail. Born into a family of doctors, he grew up in Manhattan, the oldest of three children. Unlike his quieter siblings, he was always the extrovert.

Tellingly, the rebellious boy tried to befriend blacks, but was forbidden by his parents. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, won the Bronze Star in World War II and got a law degree from Columbia University.

By 1948, Kunstler had married Lotte Rosenberger, a childhood flame, and the couple had two daughters. Soon, he formed a law practice with his brother, Michael, and the two made a living handling wills and estates.

It all changed in 1961, when an ACLU friend asked Kunstler to stop in Jackson, Miss., on his way home from a Los Angeles trip. Civil rights protests were erupting, and the Freedom Riders--a group of activists trying to integrate bus systems in the Deep South--were being sent to prison.

Kunstler went to offer moral support. But he stayed longer than expected, rocked by his encounter with racism. He drifted away from his law practice and became more politically involved. Eventually, Kunstler served as counsel to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he helped form the Center for Constitutional Rights, a pioneering advocacy group in New York.

His star was rising, but the Chicago Seven case put him on the map. When prosecutors failed to win a conspiracy conviction, Kunstler got much of the media credit.

Imagine a trial where one defendant is gagged, another hurls Yiddish curses at the judge and the prosecutor attacks his rivals as homosexuals. It happened in Chicago, after Kunstler and others turned the proceedings into political theater. When the dust settled, there were contempt sentences for all, including a four-year prison penalty for Kunstler. He was later cleared.

“Bill’s always shown great courage,” says attorney Leonard Weinglass, who worked with Kunstler on the Chicago trial. “And when you think that he was once a Hubert Humphrey liberal who dabbled in politics, the change is amazing. His cases are the stuff of history.”

*

Kunstler’s autobiography lists them all, but its most revealing passages focus on his personal life. With painful honesty, he recounts the sexual infidelities that led to the breakup of his first marriage in 1973.

“Young women pursued me, most likely because I was something of a celebrity and, the more well known I became, the more aggressive the woman got,” he writes. “For someone with my vanity and ego, it was gratifying.”

Kunstler married his second wife, attorney Margaret Ratner, in 1975. He speaks effusively about her, saying she has made him more considerate. Asked about his first wife, Kunstler says he and Lotte have “a very decent relationship.” She, however, offers a different view.

“His belligerence on behalf of what he believes is sincere,” the former Mrs. Kunstler suggests. “But it’s also exaggerated, because he wants to impress people, too. . . . He has this incredible need to be understood and liked. And I don’t think he’s all that mature at 75. That part of him is suspect.”

So is his memory. In her introduction to Kunstler’s book, co-writer Sheila Isenberg says the lawyer told her stories about himself that turned out to be untrue. In many cases, she adds, “he is the principal embellisher of his own myth.”

*

At 6 on a cool Monday morning, Kunstler is heading for Hartford, Conn. It’s Law Day and the man who has been slapped with more contempt citations than he cares to remember will be a featured speaker before 22 judges.

“Can you believe this?” he mutters outside his office. “It’s kind of strange. But if they want me, they want me.”

They want him at 10 a.m. sharp, and Kunstler is known for being late. This morning he wants to be on time and his chariot awaits--a beat-up van with a canoe on top that looks like a hippie bus from 1967. Inside, it’s a mess.

The driver, a young law student and ardent Irish Republican Army sympathizer, has a bumper sticker taped to the roof that reads: “Strip Search the Queen.” Almost immediately, Kunstler starts yakking.

“Will you get to the goddamned point!” he barks, as the driver tries to cut in with a long, complicated joke. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

Not when Kunstler wants the floor. Seizing an opening, he starts a daylong, stream-of-consciousness rap that’s almost impossible to interrupt.

It begins with the Patty Hearst case, which Kunstler brings up for no apparent reason, then skips to the time he hugged Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Digressing altogether, Kunstler recalls a dinner with John Gotti and then describes the girls he made love to during a 1936 trip to Spain.

As the van chugs into suburban Westchester County, he complains about his former home, saying: “Not one black person lived in my town. It was unreal.”

When his van reaches the Hartford courthouse, Kunstler is greeted by John Brittain, a black law professor. He recalls how the New York lawyer helped bail out Freedom Riders. Long before most whites discovered civil rights.

“Bill is special,” Brittain says, hugging him. “We don’t forget.”

*

Inside, Kunstler sits on a dais in a courtroom. It’s a bizarre sight that grows more incongruous when 22 black-robed judges file in, solemnly nodding at the long-haired lawyer. Amazed, he nods back.

“No one here should dispute this man’s commitment to justice, even though we may not agree with him,” says Matthew Gordon, a local lawyer who helped select Kunstler as the day’s speaker.

Casing the crowd, Kunstler gives them a polite tongue-lashing. He notes that Law Day is a counterpoint to May Day in socialist countries. Then he blasts corrupt officials--including judges--who “set up” innocent blacks.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with so many judges without wanting to hide,” he jokes. “But it’s OK, I can get out of here fast.”

Kunstler rushes out of the courthouse when the speech is over, heading for his next appointment 50 miles up the road. He’s representing Moonface Bear, the Golden Hill Paugeesukq tribal chief, who is battling state officials over the right to sell cigarettes tax-free on a reservation.

“Wait!” says Gordon, running up to Kunstler. “Can I come too?”

It’s a painful moment: Gordon, a middle-aged lawyer with a ‘60s hangover, would like nothing more than to climb into Kunstler’s magic bus. He’ll call his secretary. He’ll clear his schedule. He’ll get to touch Indians.

“Maybe I could follow you . . , “ he says, his voice trailing off. “Or maybe we can do it next time.” The two shake hands and Kunstler’s van rolls north.

Lost in thought, he begins shuffling anxiously through legal papers.

“Now what the hell are we doing up there on the reservation today?” he grumbles to himself. “I don’t really know what the program is yet.”

It’s a recurring complaint about Kunstler. During the conspiracy trial, critics say, his rhetoric was compelling, but he didn’t do his legal homework. The lawyer remembers it differently, and his war stories are surreal.

Like the time he called Paul Krassner, editor of the Realist, to the stand. Unbeknown to the defense team, the witness had taken a megadose of LSD before appearing. Here’s how Kunstler describes the encounter:

“Tell the jury when you came to Chicago in 1968,” he asked.

“I was born in Albany,” Krassner answered.

Perplexed, Kunstler asked: “What did you do in Chicago?”

“I was on the high school football team,” Krassner responded.

By now spectators were stirring. Kunstler asked a final question: “When did you leave Chicago?”

“I told you, I was on the football team,” Krassner answered.

At this, Abbie Hoffman whispered: “He’s freaked out! Sit him down!”

Thinking quickly, Kunstler slammed his hand down on the lectern and boomed: “Thank you, Mr. Krassner! No further questions!” As if his witness had delivered the most damning testimony in the trial. The prosecution team, which hadn’t been paying attention, impatiently waved Krassner off the stand.

It’s a great story. Except it’s not quite true.

In his memoirs, Krassner admits taking LSD, yet recalls a completely different exchange. The official transcript provides a third version.

“These are details,” says Kunstler, asked about the discrepancies. “I mean, the man was stoned out of his mind. That’s all you need to know.”

*

With a shudder, the van comes to a halt on a dirt road in rural Connecticut. Easing his big frame out, Kunstler greets Moonface Bear, an unsmiling, solidly built man who welcomes him to the small reservation.

Wandering down a forest trail, the lawyer outlines his client’s case. But then he’s overwhelmed by the past. There had been a tense confrontation here last summer between Native Americans and police, he explains, and violence seemed imminent.

“This place,” Kunstler says, “had the smell of Attica.”

In September, 1971, some 1,500 inmates at a prison in Upstate New York seized 42 hostages, demanding improvements in living conditions. Kunstler and others were called in to help mediate the crisis.

When talks stalled, state troopers stormed Attica, killing 29 inmates and 10 civilian hostages. It was the bloodiest prison disaster in American history.

The memory is crystal clear. Or is it? In Kunstler’s book, he recalls a dramatic moment when he told inmates that they weren’t going to get a better deal than the final offer made by state negotiators.

Tempers flared in the prison courtyard, then subsided. In the aftermath, he writes, New York Times reporter Tom Wicker--who was also called in to mediate--came up to him and whispered: “Bill, you’ve saved all our lives.”

It’s a great story. Except it isn’t quite true.

Wicker never said those words because he wasn’t in the courtyard at that moment. He was 10 miles away in a motel bar, according to his own book, “A Time to Die.” He does, however, credit the attorney with great courage.

“I thought we were in danger of dying at one point,” Kunstler says, heading for court with Moonface Bear. “That’s what I remember.”

*

The next morning, Kunstler is in Manhattan federal court. He’s seeking permission from a three-judge panel to represent three of the men convicted in the World Trade Center bombing. A trial judge had refused the request and Kunstler attacks his decision, saying: “It makes the law look like an ass.”

After a testy hearing, the panel also denies his plea, saying Kunstler could face a conflict of interest between these new defendants and others he represents. Angered, the lawyer strides outdoors to a phalanx of TV cameras.

“The United States government is putting Islam on trial,” he says. “We’re going to fight them all the way.”

Three hours later, he jets to Ohio for the 24th anniversary of the shooting of four students at Kent State University. It’s an emotional event, and Kunstler’s eyes fill with tears when he recalls how the families still grieve.

“They never got over this,” he says. “Neither did I.”

But there’s no time for nostalgia. As he speaks the next morning, Kunstler is in yet another courtroom, waiting for a client to be sentenced. Solomon Mengstie, a black Ethiopian Jew, was convicted of armed robbery and faces up to 25 years in prison. He and others robbed two people of $9.99, but friends say Mengstie is a soft-spoken man who simply fell in with the wrong crowd.

“I never saw a person who inflicted so little pain and is about to receive so much pain,” Kunstler tells the court. “To some he’s just another black man going in. But this system is filled with racism.”

The judge listens impassively, then gives Mengstie 5 to 11 years. Kunstler makes his way out of the crowded courts building, stifling a yawn.

“I’m beat,” he says, suddenly looking every one of his 75 years.

*

Back in the office, Kunstler is on the phone with Ferguson, the Long Island Railroad gunman. The lawyer rolls his eyes, as partner Kuby watches intently.

“I know, Colin. . . . Listen to me . . . Colin, please,” he begs, as the client shouts about jail conditions. Soon, Kunstler loses patience and delivers his message: It would be good for Ferguson to appear on “60 Minutes” in the fall and speak to an audience of millions.

“Just be yourself, Colin,” Kunstler says. “That’s all you have to do.”

Kuby, in a playful mood, jumps to his feet.

“Yeah, Colin,” he says, spraying the room with imaginary gunfire. “Just be your usual wacky self.”

It’s getting late, and Kunstler steps outside for fresh air. He rubs his eyes and a visitor asks if he has a headache. The answer is automatic:

“When Charles Garry, the radical lawyer, was dying, they asked if he had a headache,” he says. “And he said: ‘I don’t have headaches. I give them.’ ”

Kunstler laughs, but he can’t steal another man’s epitaph. What he has in mind for himself is more cinematic: A dramatic trial summation, perhaps, then a fatal collapse at the lectern. He’ll breathe his last on the evening news.

“What a story!” he says, with a vainglorious grin. “Now that’s an obituary I can live with.”