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113 Chapter 11 The Call Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world . . . would do this, it would change the earth. —William Faulkner, commencement speech at Oxford High School, 1951 Hardin looked again out his office window at the clock in the high tower across the street. Time seemed to be moving faster. He then decided he would call Alexander, directly and immediately, but that he would do so “as a Tennessean,” not as the US attorney. After all, he had not yet conferred with any of his superiors in the Justice Department. He had not given so much as a heads-up to his big boss, Griffin B. Bell, the seventy-second attorney general of the United States. Bell, the courtly Georgia Democrat, was (like Hardin) appointed by President Carter. Hardin said later he did not call Bell at this point, thinking he would not be able to reach him quickly enough—and feeling that such a delay would effectively end any possibility of an accelerated swearing-in of Alexander before the day was out. Across the street, the minute hand had moved forward. “Governor Blanton was getting ready to release several individuals, some of whom were targets in the federal grand jury investigation,” Hardin recalled in our interview. “One of them was Eddie Denton, who was serving time for a triple murder [in Newport, Tennessee, in a tavern shooting in the early hours of Christmas morning, 1975]. I decided ‘I can’t stand by any longer. This is it.’ “I decided to call Lamar and tell him that I was calling as a Tennessean, but that I felt it was my obligation as a chief law enforcement officer for the Middle District of Tennessee to convey to state authorities any information I had about impending criminal activities or irregularities or improprieties about to occur.” He also believed that he alone should phone Alexander, rather than delegate the task to his number 2, Joe Brown, the chief assistant US attorney, 114 COUP “for basically two reasons: Joe was the lead prosecutor in the case, and it would look improper for him to have to call the incoming governor and advise him about information concerning a target of investigation, that is the present state government. Defense attorneys would have a field day with that in court. And also I did not feel that Joe could get the attention of the right people and, perhaps, not even be able to get through to them.” He knew he was stepping into a gray area, where the proper path was not clear. “I knew, as a principle of law, US officials ought not to be messing around in state government that closely,” he told me. “I think it’s a dangerous precedent . But I had to let him know.” Hardin also felt he “had to keep the information away from as many federal employees as possible” so that if the maneuver failed he alone would take the heat. “I was concerned that eventually the defense attorneys would use my involvement—sharing sensitive information about the case with state officials, and blocking established state procedures—as a basis for appeal. Everybody involved was concerned this thing would go south. “I was trying to shield my staff and the FBI from knowing as much as possible. The FBI was my client, and I felt an obligation to my client. I felt an obligation to my staff also. I can’t be out there being accused of dabbling at politics, or ‘Hardin wants to run for governor’ or ‘He’s doing it for some political reason.’ If it had to come, I wanted it to be from me. I’m not trying to be a martyr here—I’m just trying to tell you.” Except for his brief conversation with Gisler in the hallway moments earlier , Hardin had not consulted anyone in the FBI about this new information —to say nothing of taking the extraordinary step of sharing sensitive investigative information directly with a state government, let alone an official so visible as the governor-elect three days before inauguration day, urging him to take office ahead of schedule. Gisler, in an interview, said he felt that Hardin was deeply concerned over how the story would play out if events proceeded on the current course. He told me that he and Hardin had a high level of “mutual trust...

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