Charles Ruff; Attorney Defended Clinton in Impeachment Trial

Charles F.C. Ruff, then President Clinton’s White House counsel, traveled to Florida two years ago to watch as former astronaut John Glenn made his second trip to outer space, this time at age 77.

The lawyer’s presence at NASA’s launch party was an indication of the affection that clients had for Ruff, who died Sunday at the age of 61.

Ruff had represented Glenn, then a Democratic senator from Ohio, in the so-called Keating Five scandal a decade earlier. Five senators were accused of helping savings and loan chief Charles Keating in his legal troubles after he had given large donations to their campaigns.

Ruff, a private defense attorney at the time, persuaded the Senate Ethics Committee that Glenn had done nothing wrong.

It is rare in Washington for political figures to show gratitude to attorneys years later, but Ruff’s unexpected death brought remembrances of a tough, gifted man who was well-liked.

“We loved him for his generous spirit and his keen wit,” said Clinton, whom Ruff defended in his historic impeachment trial. “All of us at the White House admired Chuck for the power of his advocacy, the wisdom of his judgment and the strength of his leadership.”

Ruff’s wife Susan found him unconscious in the bedroom of their home Sunday. District of Columbia police attributed the death to natural causes, and Ruff’s wife speculated that he had suffered a heart attack while taking a shower.

Some of the affection for the highly influential lawyer resulted from his even-tempered demeanor in spite of a severe disability. Partially paralyzed by a virus that he contracted while teaching law as a young man in Africa, he used a wheelchair for nearly 40 years, never complaining about his discomfort or the inconvenience that it brought to his professional life, friends said.

Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor, said, “Trial lawyers who have a handicap are listened to by juries very closely, but Chuck would be listened to whether he had a handicap or not.”

Ruff’s paralysis resulted from a trip to Liberia in the 1960s to teach law under a Ford Foundation grant after he had graduated from Swarthmore College and Columbia University Law School. He awoke one morning with a flu-like illness and could not move his legs. The mysterious disease was never identified.

Lloyd Cutler, a predecessor of Ruff as White House counsel in the Clinton administration, said that among Ruff’s strengths were “his wonderful temperament and his ability to establish credibility by never overstating his case.”

“He was truly one of the great lawyers of our time,” Cutler said.

A national television audience saw Ruff at his best last year in the Senate chamber when he led the White House defense in staving off the president’s removal from office in the Monica Lewinsky case.

Typically, he began on a humble note, referring to Clinton as “the man whose conduct has brought all of us to this moment.” Recognizing the merit in arguments by Clinton’s Republican opponents, Ruff acknowledged that his client’s conduct was “wrongful” and “morally reprehensible” and that “no one can claim to be free from doubt” about whether the accusations against the president should lead to his removal from office.

But Ruff insisted that in his view, Clinton’s conduct had not crossed the line leading to a conviction. Ultimately, Ruff prevailed.

Lanny Davis, who worked with Ruff in the White House counsel’s office, said Ruff’s reasonableness in presenting arguments usually “defanged his adversaries.”

Early in his career, Ruff gained considerable experience as a federal prosecutor, both in the Justice Department’s organized crime section during the 1960s and as the last of several Watergate special prosecutors in the 1970s. In one of his final duties, he examined accusations that President Gerald R. Ford, who succeeded Richard Nixon, had used campaign funds improperly. But Ruff found no wrongdoing by Ford.

Twice in his career he gave up a lucrative private law practice to take jobs in the public sector. In 1995 he relinquished a $400,000 annual partnership to accept an invitation to head a District of Columbia legal office for the mayor at the relatively modest salary of $82,000 a year.

In January 1997, Clinton asked Ruff to leave private life to be the White House counsel, succeeding Abner Mikva, a former federal judge, at a starting salary of $115,000. Ruff remarked that “when the president of the United States asks you to do something, you say, ‘How can I help you?’ ”

Ruff left that post after the impeachment battle last year.

Surviving, besides his wife, are two grown daughters, Carin and Christy, and his mother, Margaret Ruff.