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ABBE LOWELL ’74, ’77L COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
In the wake of the AIPAC case, Lowell has been more forceful
in his defense of clients accused of leaking information, asserting
that it is inconsistent to punish some leakers while the leaking is
encouraged.
“[The] Executive Branch leaks classified information often to
forward several of its goals and then prosecutes others in the same
branch for doing the same thing,” he wrote in a filing in defense
of Stephen Kim, a State Department contractor accused of leaking
information about North Korea to a journalist.
Lowell, the consummate insider, explained to the court the way
that Washington really works: “As the government has imposed ever-more
stringent restrictions on information, while simultaneously
broadening its definition of what constitutes classified information,
leaking has become essential to provide context for messages delivered
to the public through official channels. Although reliance on
a ‘leak system’ is counterintuitive for a nation that prides itself on
open government and places immense value on democratic traditions,
it has become a necessary practice, facilitating the exchange of
information between the government and its constituency.”
That case was only Lowell’s most recent brush with the Espionage
Act, a statute that he’s been grappling with since his time
as a special assistant to the Attorney General in the early 1980s,
when he helped draft some of its associated language. His background
put him on the short list of expert witnesses called before
Congress as it grappled with how to deal with WikiLeaks, when
an Army soldier was accused of leaking hundreds of thousands
of classified military reports to a website.
In December 2010, Lowell appeared before the House Judiciary
Committee. “A meaningful debate about the Espionage
Act and changes to the law are long overdue. However, a current
scandal or crisis is not the time to act too quickly,” Lowell warned
lawmakers. “There is often an urge to address the clamor of the
crisis to show that Washington is listening and doing something
and taking a problem seriously. This can lead to ill-conceived
laws that have unintended consequences that infringe on rights
and cause decades of needless litigation.”
Unlike other Beltway insiders, but like many veterans
of the Core Curriculum, Lowell lives up to the Renaissance
Man ethos. He still reads Shakespeare and sits
on the board of trustees for D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre
Company. He’s an officer at the Jewish Community Center of
Greater Washington. And he’s run four marathons, the quickest in
four hours.
“I describe him as high-octane and incredibly loyal to his clients,
whoever they are,” says Anne Kornblut ’94, a White House
correspondent for The Washington Post who has known Lowell
for years. They met when Lowell interviewed her when she applied
for admission to Columbia in 1989.
For a young, Bronx-born Lowell, there wasn’t much of a choice
when it came to college. He knew that he wanted to be in the Naked
City, and he knew that he wanted to be at the center of the action.
Even before he enrolled in 1970, he’d organized anti-war rallies,
worked for politicians and come to the conclusion — somewhat antithetically
for a young man of his era — that one of the best ways to
fight The Man was to don a suit and join forces with him.
Lowell studied political science at Columbia but it was the
classics that caught his interest. He had his “moment of truth”
during his junior year, when he shifted his focus from politics to
Elizabethan literature after a series of particularly engaging classes
with Professor Edward “Ted” Tayler. “Even then he had real
intellectual integrity,” recalls Tayler. “He never wrote cacozelia,
the great vice of both undergraduates and those in my profession.”
Lowell wrote for Spectator, too.
The 1970s were a time of upheaval and social unrest, coming
after a decade of even more unrest. Lowell remembers that he
couldn’t wait to start doing something with his career that could
help make a difference. “It wasn’t that radicalism or demonstrations
had lost credibility, but I was looking for something else,” he
says. “The idea was to work within the system to change the system.
The law allows people a chance to do that. But it doesn’t come
easily. It is hard work.”
Lowell graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude before
heading to the Law School as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and serving
as editor of the Columbia Law Review. Perhaps predictive of a career
that would see him defend politicians from both parties, Lowell
says he split his time between The Gold Rail (the bar favored by athletes
and more conservative students) and The West End (preferred
by the more liberal crowd) during the early 1970s. And then there
was the iconic Tom’s Restaurant: “I remember those ageless waitresses
who served breakfast to weary students like us,” he says.
Lowell is an equal opportunity lawyer. Throughout his career,
he has split his time between Democratic and Republican col-
Lowell’s background put him on the short list of expert witnesses called
before Congress as it grappled with how to deal with WikiLeaks.
WINTER 2011–12
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leagues. They include Democratic Rep. Gary Condit, Republican
Rep. Charlie Wilson, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal and actor Seagal.
When the GOP swept into office in 2010, Lowell went on The
Colbert Report television show and joked that he’d ordered ample
amounts of blue and red business cards.
But for all his celebrity, the case he’s most known for is the
defense of President Clinton during his impeachment hearings.
In the case’s final days, Lowell delivered an impressive closing
statement, surely bound for inclusion in some legal textbook.
“Impeachment is not a means to punish the President,” he said
in December 1998. “Impeachment is not a means to send a message
to our children that the President isn’t above the law. There
are better ways to do that. Impeachment is not a vote of confidence
for independent counsel [Ken] Starr. Impeachment is not a
penalty for the President not answering the 81 questions as some
of you would have wished.” Lowell urged the House of Representatives
to find another way to sanction President Clinton for
his misdeeds, but the GOP-led House pushed for impeachment
anyway. Two of four articles of impeachment passed the House
by narrow margins, but both were defeated in the Senate.
For Lowell, defending the rich and powerful has been a “fascinating
experience.” In front of the cameras, celebrities and politicians
are enlarged beyond their stature, but when they are in
trouble and discussing their cases in his modest office, “they are
just as scared and insecure and worried about what will happen
as anyone else. And everyone’s entitled to a fair trial.”
Alex Kingsbury ’04J wrote for US News & World Report from
2004–11. A native of Maine, he currently lives in Washington, D.C.