The Investigator
Fifty Years of Uncovering the Truth
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The Los Angeles Times once called investigative lawyer Terry Lenzner “one of the most powerful and dreaded private investigators in the world.” In his fifty-year career, Lenzner has worked with politicians, celebrities, governments, and corporations worldwide; with a steadfast commitment to the truth, he has uncovered facts that have shaped policy and influenced major legal battles.
In this captivating memoir, Lenzner speaks about his varied career and high-profile cases for the first time. At the Justice Department in 1964, he investigated the murder of three civil rights workers—an infamous event that inspired the film Mississippi Burning. He led the national Legal Services Program for the poor, prosecuted organized crime in New York, defended peace activist Philip Berrigan, and represented CIA operative Sid Gottlieb. As a counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, Lenzner investigated Nixon’s dirty tricks and followed the money trail that led to the Watergate burglary and cover-up. He was the first person to deliver a congressional subpoena to a sitting U.S. president. He uncovered cost overruns of the Alaska oil pipeline, helped identify the Unabomber, investigated the circumstances of Princess Diana’s death, and cleared Hugo Chavez of false corruption charges. Lenzner also worked with President Clinton’s defense team during the impeachment hearings.
The Investigator is a riveting personal account: Lenzner astounds with anecdotes of scandal and intrigue, offers lessons in investigative methods, and provides an eye-opening look behind some of the most talked-about media stories and world events of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One of Washington's most in-the-know private eyes spills the beans in this canny memoir. Lenzner, a lawyer and founder of Investigative Group International, recalls his work as a Justice Department attorney hunting for the murderers of civil rights activists in Mississippi in 1964, probing the Watergate scandal for the Ervin Committee, and a slew of for-hire investigations into the identity of the Unabomber, Monica Lewinski's background, the business dealings of Mitt Romney, and other high-profile cases. According to Lenzner, the investigator's life is patient and dogged, a matter of tracking down legal records, sifting financial documents, building rapport with witnesses, piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of details into a coherent picture. There are few bombshells here; the biggest is his conjecture that the Watergate break-ins may have been mounted to conceal bribes paid by billionaire Howard Hughes to President Nixon. The truth Lenzner unveils, in part through shrewd thumbnails of everyone from John Dean to Kenneth Starr, is more about character and motive the arrogant delusions that spawn and sustain malfeasance, and the resentments and idealism that spur informants and whistleblowers. The result is a low-key but absorbing study of the hidden impulses behind corruption and scandal. 16-page b&w insert.
