November 13, 2011
Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.
District Attorney
New York County
Dear Mr. Vance,
I knew your father. When he was secretary of state, I was working for Stansfield Turner. I highly admired your father for resigning on principle after that hare-brained operation fell apart in the desert of Iran. So very few have had the integrity to resign on principle — a major flaw in our body politic, in my view.
We have a good bit in common, including fathers whom we admired. We both grew up in New York City. I’m a half-generation ahead of you, and so perhaps the following expression fell out of favor during your younger years.
But my Dad, even when he became the Chancellor of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, would dutifully repeat the same words whenever I asked for permission to embark on one of the many dubious adventures being brainstormed (and often executed) by my friends in the Bronx.
“But, Dad, everyone else is doing it.” It was always the same reply: “If all of your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it!?”
Joseph W. McGovern was a stickler for the law (Professor Emeritus, Fordham Law School), but I’m sure he would have had no problem at all with my joining “everyone else” on October 1 in walking onto the Brooklyn Bridge at the tacit invitation of the NYPD.
He would have been shocked to learn of the bait-and-switch circumstances of my arrest. There is no way he would have stood still for such police misconduct.
You know the right thing to do. You learned such basic things at Georgetown, if not at Yale. I learned them at Fordham.
The charges against the 700-plus Brooklyn Bridge-walkers dishonor our native New York. God knows the city has enough trouble without the police being encouraged to act in that way.
You are the last person to need reminding of what is at stake, when the NYPD itself is allowed to think it is above the law.
Yours truly,
Raymond L. McGovern