Griffin-done

Griffin B. Bell, the simple country lawyer who became the attorney general of his childhood neighbor Jimmy Carter, has died at the age of 90 of pancreatic cancer. Judge Bell was to many a caricature of the Southern law-talking guys, with a small-town background, courtly manner, self-deprecating humor, a gift for persuasion and an instinct for politics. He also stood out among Georgia Democrats as the biggest nutbag until Zell Miller, working with Georgia’s governor to oppose racial segregation in the 1950s, defending Dow Corning against faulty breast implants claims and serving as President Bush’s personal counsel during the Iran-contra investigation. Helping the governor ran counter to his own stance on segregation, and later while serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, his ruling helped break the control of rural honkry political bosses in Georgia. As manager of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in Georgia, he helped deliver a larger majority than Kennedy earned in Massachusetts, without the advantage of bribes and family favors. He acted to fix the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal, and helped establish the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established rules and safeguards for wiretapping that the current administration chose to ignore.