77,
40
Friday, February 22, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
V4T here Does
Frankness End
And Ego Begin?
In Special Counsel,
Leon Charney sets
out to tell all
about his role
as a key advisor during
the Israel-Egypt peace
talks. But does he
have to tell all?
BY MIMSI KROMER MILTON
Special To The Jewish News
L
eon Charney quotes the Torah
when asked if his new book, Special
Counsel, might be construed as self-
serving: "Strangers should praise you, but
if not, then your own mouth." Besides, he
adds, "I didn't praise myself in the book,
I told my story...(and it) would have come
out anyway when the Carter papers were
opened. I thought it was best to tell my
story before someone else wrote about
me."
In Special Counsel, Charney details the
role he played as a behind-the-scenes ad-
visor to top-level American and Israeli
politicians during the Camp David nego-
tiations. He became a personal friend of
Ezer Weizman, Israeli Defense Minister,
and Robert Lipshutz, U.S Counsel to the
President. Carter, who first viewed him
with "trepidation," later grew to trust
Charney. "He knew that I was very Jewish
and kept kosher," Charney says. "I was
an example to him that there didn't have
to be a contradiction between a good Jew
and a good American. My job didn't de-
pend on the President liking me. I could
be blunt."
Bluntness was one ace Charney could
use. His Talmudic background was an-
other. The son of Eastern European im-
migrants who settled in Bayonne, New
Jersey, Charney is a cantor who studied at
Yeshiva University. "I understand Begin's
mind very well." Charney comments.
"He's like a father figure to me."
Charney also understands the world of
international finance (never far removed
from the political arena), through his work
as an attorney. Acting as legal counsel for
numerous U.S. companies seeking to do
business in Israel afid for several U.S.
banks that suffered losses when the Israel-
British Bank floundered, Charney "in-
creased (his) contacts among the wealthy
and powerful in Israel as well as in the U.S.
Congress." He was involved, too, with
freeing Soviet Jews, work he had started
as an advisor to Indiana Senator Hartke.
So the contacts were there, (those "back-
door channels," as Charney puts it), and
also the background and the desire to help.
But lots of machers can claim the same.
It was Charney, though, who found him-
self in a role that was, he says joyfully, the
envy of many. He got there through some
lucky coincidences and because he per-
sonally "clicked" with the right people at
the right time.
For instance, Charney recounts in his
book that he first met Weizman when the
two of them had adjacent seats on a trans-
Atlantic flight. Their instinctive liking for
each other led to Charney's becoming the
agent for Weizman's autobiography. A
personal friendship developed after that.
Charney's entre to the White House was