BOOK REVIEW / NONFICTION : A Cunning Betrayer of the Public Trust : FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES: The Rise and Fall of Clark Clifford <i> by Douglas Frantz and David McKean; </i> Little, Brown $24.95, 464 pages

Nowadays, Washington power broker Clark Clifford is probably best known for his involvement with the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the last in a long list of clients that includes Presidents, Supreme Court justices, miscellaneous moguls and multinational corporations.

But as we learn from “Friends in High Places,” Clifford had been peddling his influence for more than a half-century before he was hired by BCCI. And the flaw that finally brought him down--the willingness to turn a profit on his political connections, real and imagined--was discernible from the very outset of his career.

“Clifford . . . was present at--and integral to--the creation of the permanent shadow government of lawyers and lobbyists who have come to dominate Washington,” write New York Times reporter Douglas Frantz and congressional investigator David McKean, authors of “Friends in High Places.” “He was a charter member of those unelected couriers who have come to wield as much power as the men and women elected to govern the nation.”

Clifford’s first job after graduating law school was as an unpaid errand boy at a St. Louis law firm, but by the time Clifford showed up in Washington toward the end of World War II, he caught the eye of Harry Truman: “Big fella, ain’t he?” said the President, who entrusted Clifford first with the task of setting up poker games and later with the more demanding task of running Truman’s 1948 campaign.

Clifford, the authors write, was a sharp, effective but mostly unscrupulous political operative. He counseled Truman to smear his political rival, Henry Wallace, as a Communist sympathizer; he encouraged Truman to support a Jewish state in Palestine as a means of attracting Jewish campaign contributions and votes in America; he was unhesitant (and untroubled) about taking credit for the work of fellow staff members or borrowing substantial sums of money from men who sought to influence the government.

Significantly, Clifford left the White House soon after the electoral victory that he helped engineer. And, although Clifford served briefly (if famously) in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration as secretary of defense, the authors show that the rest of his career was devoted to serving the interests of any client willing to pay him.

“Clifford had learned enough about Washington to understand that power and influence could be exercised outside the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” the authors write.

Clifford always insisted that he was not trafficking in political connections even as he signed up clients who sought him precisely because of his linkages to government. “If you want influence,” he told Howard Hughes in what the authors call his “patented speech” to new clients, “I suggest you go elsewhere.”

But no one was fooled by Clifford’s disingenuousness and especially not his clients. After Clifford provided both legal services and political acumen to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy cracked a joke about Clifford’s lack of interest in a Cabinet position. “The only thing Clark Clifford asked for,” Kennedy quipped, “was to have the name of his law firm printed on the back of the dollar bill.”

Although Frantz and McKean style their book as an “unauthorized” biography, they disclose that Clifford granted them more than 50 hours of interviews. Clearly, the veteran insider thought he could use his influence yet again to put a spin on their work--and, yet again, it appears that he has succeeded.

While the authors are willing to reveal Clifford’s dirtiest little secrets, they simply cannot bring themselves to hold him fully accountable for his offenses against the public trust. Rather, the authors seem to view Clifford as a tragic figure who must be held to a different standard than ordinary back-room pols and boardroom influence-peddlers.

His worst offense, one might conclude from “Friends in High Places,” is that he simply outlived the era of go-along-and-get-along ethics in American politics. Frantz and McKean end up blunting their own barbs with pretty words, but one cannot put down “Friends in High Places” without the sense that the very worst fears of the Washington-bashers came fully alive in the life and work of Clark Clifford.