NEW YORK – Ramsey Clark, the attorney general in the Johnson administration who has become an outspoken activist for unpopular issues and is a fierce critic of U.S. policy, has died. He was 93.
Clark, whose father, Tom Clark, was attorney general and U.S. Supreme Court justice, died Friday at his home in Manhattan, a family member, Sharon Welch, revealed to media channels, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
After serving in President Lyndon Johnson’s cabinet in 1967 and ’68, Clark instituted a private law practice in New York in which he campaigned for civil rights, racism and the death penalty, and represented declared enemies of the United States, including the former Yugoslav Slavic President Slobodan. Milosevic and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. He also defended former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
New York civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, who has worked with Clark on numerous cases, called the death “very, very sad in a season of losses.”
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“The progressive legal community has lost its oldest dean and statesman,” Kuby said. “For many generations, Ramsey Clark has been a principled voice, conscience and a fighter for civil and human rights.”
‘Jane Fonda of the Gulf War’
In courtrooms across the country, Clark has defended antivarial activists. In public court, he accused the United States of militarism and arrogance, starting with the Vietnam War and continuing with Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf War.
Ramsey Clark, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Center, speaks at Lincoln Center in New York City, September 14, 1976. (Associated Press)
When Clark visits Iraq after Operation Desert Storm and returns to accuse the United States of war crimes, Newsweek calls him the Jane Fonda of the Gulf War.
Clark said he just wants the United States to live up to its ideals. “If you do not insist that your government obey the law, then what right do you have to demand it from others?” he said.
The slender, gentle Texan moved to Washington in 1961 as a new frontier in President John F. Kennedy’s Department of Justice.
He was 39 when Johnson appointed him attorney general in 1967, the second youngest ever – Robert Kennedy was 36.
Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who was Harry Truman’s attorney general before joining the Supreme Court in 1949, swore in his son as attorney general, and then retired to prevent the conflict of interest.
Ramsey Clark said his work at Justice involved him in the civil rights revolution, which he called “the noblest quest of the American people in our time.”
He also maintains opposition to the death penalty and eavesdropping, defends the right of disagreement and criticizes FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover when no one else in government would dare.
But as Johnson’s attorney general, Clark had the task of getting Dr. Prosecuting Benjamin Spock for counseling young people from the Vietnam era to resist the concept, a position he sympathized with.
“We won the case, that was the worst part,” he said years later.
Marine Corps veteran
The Dallas-born Clark, who made a dent in the Marine Corps in 1945-46, moved his family to New York in 1970 and established a pro bono-oriented practice. He then said that he and his partners limited their annual personal income to $ 50,000, a figure he did not always achieve.
“Money is not an interest of mine,” he said, but at the same time he was making steep medical bills for his daughter, Ronda, who was born with severe disabilities. He and his wife, Georgia, who married in 1949, also had a son, Thomas, a lawyer.
Clark took a chance on losing the election office and losing the Democratic Senate in 1976 to Daniel P. Moynihan.
Clark’s client list includes peace and disarmament activists such as the Harrisburg 7 and the Plow Force 8. Abroad, he represents dissidents in Iran, Chile, the Philippines and Taiwan, and airstrikes in the Soviet Union.
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He was a lawyer for Soviet and Syrian Jews, but made many Jews angry with other clients. He defends a Nazi prison camp guard fighting extradition, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in a lawsuit over the death of a passenger of a cruise ship by hijackers.
There were usually two to three dozen active cases on Clark’s legal calendar, and about 100 in the background. Death penalty cases were an important aspect.
“We’re talking about civil liberties,” he said. “We have the largest prison population per capita on earth. The largest prison guard in the world is the freest country on earth?”