Pretzel Logic

by Howard Altman

How would Captain America feel if he lost his shield?

Ask any reporter in this town. Because Monday morning, journalists lost our shield, a guy named Sam Klein, lawyer, friend and staunch defender of the First Amendment.

He was 55 and died at his home of an apparent heart attack.

We will miss him greatly.

And without knowing it, our readers will miss him too. Because while Sam was paid to protect reporters and editors and publishers, he did so to protect the public and its right to know.

During the past eight years, I spent many, many hours with Sam. On the phone, in my conference room, in his offices on the 50th floor of the Bell Atlantic Tower, we sweated the details, arguing and agonizing over words and phrases. Before publication and after, when we were being sued or threatened, it was comforting to know that, despite the sometimes-tortured dissection of the stories we worked so hard to produce, Klein was there.

He was there for every big story we ever wrote. He was there when the CIA threatened to put me in jail for naming its agents in Pennsylvania. He was there when a cadre of crooks tried to blame the Kimberly Ernest murder on the son of a prominent lawyer. He was there nearly every time we used the letters F, U, M and O in the same sentence.

Sam was there not to keep information out, but to find ways to keep things in.

Journalists never had a better friend.

One of the highlights of my career was witnessing Sam Klein in action.

Especially when the action involved my favorite state Senator, Vinny J. Fumo, the helicopter-flying Mensa genius.

Klein, with his sense of justice and fair play, always enjoyed taking on the Senator, an admitted bully of a pol.

A few years back, Fumo sued City Paper and yours truly because, among other things, we referred to his relationship between the Board of City Trusts and some of his campaign contributors who did business with the board as "one great big buddy fuck."

When it was Fumo's turn to be deposed, Klein went to town.

After two very heated hours, Klein asked Fumo about the "buddy fuck" phrase.

"Did you find anything inappropriate or inaccurate about that paragraph?" he demanded of Fumo.

"Why don't I ask you that question," Fumo snorted. "I think it's obscene, vulgar. I --"

This is where Klein pounced.

"Do you use language like that, Senator?" he snarled.

"Not publicly," Fumo answered.

"Aren't you quoted in the Philadelphia magazine as using the word 'fuck' over and over and over again?" said Klein, indignant at the Senator's double-standardizing.

Klein's arch nemesis, lawyer Dick Sprague, instructed Fumo not to answer. Klein rephrased the question.

"Were those quotes in Philadelphia magazine attributing your use of the word 'fuck' over and over and over again improperly reported?"

After Sprague and Klein argued over Sprague's repeated refusal to allow Fumo to answer the question -- a galling example of lawyerly tangoing considering how Sprague had raked me over the coals -- Klein induced what may be one of the funniest and most psychologically telling moments in the history of depositions.

"'Buddy fuck' is entirely different than the word 'fuck,' number one," Fumo said. "It implies a homosexual relationship in which someone's penis is probably -- is inserted in someone's anus in a form of a -- In the context of the previous paragraph meaning that I and [lobbyist Stephen] Wojdak and [developer Ron] Rubin participated in homosexual activities of an intimate nature."

Klein, like me, was incredulous. My use of 'buddy fuck' had nothing to do with anuses and everything to do with deals between friends. But Fumo didn't see it that way.

"Well, that's what it implies to me," he said. "And if you don't find it that way, there's something wrong with your mind."

I can still hear Sam Klein’s voice as I write this. I can picture him rolling his eyes.

I can also feel the passion. Sam Klein was all about passion for uncovering the truth and standing up for what’s right.

Having Sam Klein's blessing on a story helped me make tough decisions. If I proved a point to him, I knew I'd proven my point. He was tough and he was fair and he knew how far to go.

The last time I spoke to Sam, I was trying to decide how to deal with someone trying to sell me access to one of the government's most secure facilities.

We'd spoken frequently over this matter. Given that we are at war, Sam and I agreed he should contact the feds. Then he told me not to have any more e-mail contact with the would-be spy, advice I ignored, at first, at the behest of the FBI.

Sam's last words to me were quite surprising. And very typical as well.

Always trying to find ways to get things in print, Klein advised me to cooperate with the FBI. We do ride-alongs with police, he argued. Why not do this?

It surprised me because I thought Sam thought I shouldn't get involved.

But typical, because had I followed his advice, which I didn't, it would have made a hell of a story.

I love Sam because he really loved a good story. And I will miss our shield more than he ever would have known.