E. Robert Wallach, a California lawyer who came to Washington in the early 1980s as an adviser to presidential counselor Edwin Meese III, only to become a central figure in the Reagan-era Wedtech bribery scandal, in which he was first convicted and later freed after defending himself in court, died May 15 at his home in Alameda, Calif. He was 88.
E. Robert Wallach, lawyer in 1980s Wedtech scandal, dies at 88
The death was announced by the San Francisco law firm of Rains Lucia Stern, where Mr. Wallach worked in recent years. The cause was not disclosed.
Early in his career, Mr. Wallach established a reputation as one of California’s top trial lawyers, winning the state’s first million-dollar settlement in a medical malpractice case, followed by a $3.6 million verdict in New Mexico, after a child suffered brain damage at birth.
In San Francisco, he was known as a liberal Democrat who briefly sought the U.S. Senate nomination in 1976 as a supporter of gay rights and legalized marijuana. By 1980, Mr. Wallach had become a supporter of the presidential campaign of Republican Ronald Reagan, largely because of his friendship with Meese, one of Reagan’s top advisers. Meese had been Mr. Wallach’s law school classmate and moot court partner at the University of California at Berkeley.
After Reagan’s election, Mr. Wallach came to Washington as an informal adviser to Meese, who was counselor to the president before becoming attorney general in 1985.
Mr. Wallach was named a U.S. Representative for Human Rights and served on the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, but beyond sharing lunches and memos with Meese, he exercised little real authority.
Early in 1981, Mr. Wallach became the conduit to the Reagan administration for Wedtech, a small manufacturing firm in the Bronx seeking leverage on Pentagon projects. The company’s owners, unschooled in the ways of Washington, had hired a private detective to find out why they weren’t winning defense contracts.
“I didn’t think investigating the secretary of the Army and some procurement officers was going to help,” the detective, Harold Lipset, told The Washington Post in 1987. “I thought they needed a lobbyist in Washington and [Mr. Wallach] was the only one I knew who knew somebody in Washington.”
Mr. Wallach, who had spent his early years in New York City, saw the company’s blue-collar executives as the kind of scrappy underdogs he had been as a young man. He wrote memos to Meese touting Wedtech as an inspiring company on the rise, and Reagan praised it in speeches.
Over the next few years, Wedtech landed Pentagon contracts worth an estimated $250 million, many of them awarded on a no-bid basis. Mr. Wallach admitted he had pocketed at least $1.3 million in stocks and fees as he helped the company gain a foothold in Washington.
As Wedtech struggled to fulfill its contracts, federal prosecutors bought charges of bribery, racketeering and fraud against company officials, who had rewarded themselves with expensive cars and lavish meals. Several political figures were also swept up in the widening scandal, including Mr. Wallach, former White House communications director Lyn Nofziger and members of Congress.
In the end, more than 20 people were convicted in federal court. U.S. Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-N.Y.) and former Bronx borough president Stanley Simon each spent more than two years in prison on corruption charges. Meese was not prosecuted, but in the midst of the scandal he resigned from his post as attorney general in 1988.
Mr. Wallach was convicted of racketeering in 1989 and sentenced to six years in prison, leading to the temporary suspension of his law practice in California while he appealed the decision. His conviction was overturned in 1991, after a key witness was found to have committed perjury. (Nofziger and others similarly had their convictions reversed.)
Still, Mr. Wallach’s legal troubles were not over, and in 1993 he faced a new trial in New York on similar charges. He refused to make a plea deal, maintaining he had never committed a crime in promoting Wedtech to federal officials.
“I am guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
Having spent more than $1 million on his defense and still owing more than $700,000, Mr. Wallach was reduced to acting as his own attorney almost out of desperation.
“If I get convicted a second time, I have nothing left,” he said. “I will lose everything, including my livelihood.”
When the arguments were finished, the deadlocked jury could not reach a decision. The judge dismissed all charges against Mr. Wallach, who went back to San Francisco to rebuild his career.
Eugene Robert Wallach was born April 11, 1934, in New York City. His parents worked in a hat factory and divorced when their son was 7.
He moved with his mother to Los Angeles, where she worked in an airplane assembly plant during World War II.
Mr. Wallach was a champion debater in high school and graduated in 1955 from the University of Southern California. As a law student at Berkeley, he became especially close to Meese, as they studied together in the Meese family basement.
“I used to love going to their home,” he told journalist James Traub for his 1990 book about the Wedtech scandal, “Too Good to Be True.” “Ed and I were writing briefs down in the basement, his mother would come down with the sandwiches. It was right out of Andy Hardy. It was the kind of home I had never experienced.”
After graduating in 1958, Mr. Wallach joined a San Francisco law firm, then called Walkup & Downing, and soon became recognized as a top courtroom advocate. He established a solo practice in 1971 and was known for a string of victories, often in cases involving accidents or medical malpractice. One of his courtroom victories, involving Girl Scouts burned in a car crash, led to the adoption of median barriers on some California highways.
“He was known as being the best lawyer in the courtroom in front of a jury,” Eustace de St. Phalle, a partner at Rains Lucia Stern, said in an interview. “He was always listening and was a great strategist.”
As Mr. Wallach’s legal reputation grew, he cultivated an air of eccentricity: He became known as “e. bob” — spelling his name without capital letters — and often went out in public with an exotic Saluki dog. He wore a yellow rose in his lapel.
He was married two times, to Barbara Wallach and later to Glenda Jones. Survivors include three daughters from his first marriage and seven grandchildren.
After returning to San Francisco, Mr. Wallach represented the Fang family as it purchased the San Francisco Examiner newspaper in 2000 from the Hearst company. He was also the longtime corporate counsel of the Sharper Image retail firm.
Mr. Wallach taught at several Bay Area law schools and was an informal mentor to countless lawyers. He joined Rains Lucia Stern in 2016 and continued to practice law through 2019. According to the firm, he tried 283 cases that reached a verdict — and lost only 14 times.
“The only thing I’m guilt-ridden about,” Mr. Wallach said in 1993, “is my stupidity and poor judgment in venturing off into the minefields of Washington.”
Source: WP
