The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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had no job offers of any kind from the administration, “and I’m not hanging
on every ring of the phone.” 5*
Gorton was the law firm’s lead lobbyist for a $1 million federal study on
the merits of having the Department of Energy acquire a mothballed
WPPSS reactor to produce nuclear weapons material—the project he had
championed in Congress together with Morrison and Evans, who were
still staunch supporters.
BiLL dwyeR’s noMinAtion to the federal bench was still on ice in June of
1987. Gorton and Evans were furious. Slade told Howard Baker that a deal
was a deal. He’d paid a heavy price for putting Manion over the top; now
it was time for the president to tell the Justice Department to get off the
dime. Asked if he thought the president was behind the delay, Gorton
said, “I think he’s so disengaged he doesn’t know of it. I doubt that the
question has even gotten to him.” 7
The White House equivocated, then said it was the Democrats’ fault.
Underestimating his adversary, Meese gave Dan Evans the runaround.
Often on icy terms with Reagan when they were governors, Evans demonstrated
he too could play hardball. Gorton cheered as his friend threatened
to block every Reagan judicial nomination on the West Coast if the
Justice Department continued to stonewall Dwyer. Brock Adams, who
never suggested Dwyer wouldn’t be a fine judge, volunteered to help. 8
Dwyer was finally sworn in on Dec. 1, 1987. “He will bring such moral
courage and enlightened wisdom to the bench that all who sit in judgment
before him—no matter how unpopular—will receive just treatment,”
Evans predicted. When Dwyer succumbed to cancer 15 years later
at the age of 72, he was mourned as a towering figure in Northwest law.
Gorton and Evans had given the nation one of its foremost trial judges.
Philosophically, however, Gorton and Dwyer were often at odds. The future
held a monumental clash. 9
dAn evAns wAs not A hAppy cAMpeR. In fact, a long hike in the Cascades
would have done him a world of good. At 62, not only was he a junior
* It wasn’t the first time an admirer had advanced Gorton as a candidate for director of the
FBI, although the original notion didn’t come to light until 1991 with the release of a batch of
Oval Office tapes from the Watergate era. Nixon is heard talking with John Ehrlichman
about his fervent desire to be rid of J. Edgar Hoover. The crafty old G-Man was Nixon’s equal
when it came to ruthless duplicity. As they’re kicking around possible successors, Ehrlichman
suggests Gorton—“a young attorney general in my state who’s a very classy guy.” 6