“You’re not going to believe this,” Heine said.
“Believe what, buddy?”
Heine said he didn’t have all the details but summarized what he did know: The FBI office in Raleigh needed our help, urgently, and it was tied to our home turf in Philly. It concerned the new National Constitution Center, the state-of-the-art museum under construction opposite the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The museum, dedicated to celebrating the Constitution and the Amendments, was a private, nonpartisan, and nonprofit venture, and anticipated to become one of Philadelphia’s largest tourist attractions. The Constitution Center was backed by powerful politicians, including Governor Ed Rendell and U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was scheduled to preside over the ribbon cutting in just a few months on July 4, and museum officials were still scrambling to make last-minute acquisitions. In recent weeks, Heine told me, the Constitution Center had come across an original copy of the Bill of Rights. The seller wanted $4 million.
I was confused. “Wait—how can you sell the Bill of Rights?”
“Exactly,” Heine said. “Look, you need to call this agent down in Raleigh, Paul Minella. He’s expecting your call.”
I dialed Minella.
He brought me up to date: A month before, a Washington lawyer named Richardson and a Connecticut dealer named Pratt had quietly offered to sell the Bill of Rights to the Constitution Center. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the two men were the same ones who’d tried to sell the parchment to North Carolina in 1995. The Constitution Center’s president and lawyer had hired an authenticator to examine the document, and this specialist had sent pictures of the front and back of the parchment to experts at George Washington University. These were the same experts who’d examined it three years earlier. The experts there concluded that a docket entry on the back proved this was North Carolina’s long-lost copy, looted during the Civil War. When the Constitution Center’s president learned that the document was a spoil of war—stolen property—he called the governor of Pennsylvania for advice. The Pennsylvania governor called the governor of North Carolina, who told him that the state would not pay to have it returned. An aide to the governor of North Carolina called the U.S. attorney and got the FBI involved. Moving swiftly—just that morning, the agent in Raleigh said—federal prosecutors in North Carolina had convinced a magistrate to sign a seizure warrant for the Bill of Rights.
Things were racing at light speed in North Carolina, the agent told me, with attention at the highest levels. “The U.S. attorney and the governor here are personally involved.”
“OK,” I said. “So where is the Bill of Rights now?”
“We don’t know.” Although the FBI suspected it might be in Pratt’s office or home in Connecticut, it was too risky to try a search, he said. I understood. If the agents on the raid didn’t find the Bill of Rights in either spot, the people holding it might get spooked and take the document underground again.
I dialed the president of the Constitution Center, Joe Torsella, and arranged to meet him the following morning in the office of the lawyer negotiating the deal for the museum.
That night, the FBI office in Raleigh faxed me eighty pages of documents forwarded by North Carolina state archivists, a century-long paper trail that included the newspaper article quoting Shotwell in 1897, the 1925 offer from Reid, and the 1995 offer from Richardson.
At 9 a.m. the next day, Heine and I arrived at the crimson-carpeted legal offices on the thirty-third floor of a modern Philadelphia skyscraper. A receptionist ushered us into a corner office.
Torsella, forty years old, was a rising political star in Philadelphia, a former deputy mayor and confidant of the governor. He had quarterbacked the campaign that raised $185 million in private funds to build the Constitution Center. His wife was Senator Specter’s chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and she aspired to be a federal judge. Torsella did not hide his own ambition to become a congressman or senator.
His lawyer, Stephen Harmelin, was an even bigger fish. He had graduated from Harvard Law School in 1963, the year Torsella was born, and was now the managing partner of Dilworth Paxson, a white-shoe law firm that represented Pennsylvania’s big businesses and power brokers, clients with last names like Annenberg and Otis. The firm’s alumni included judges, a mayor, a governor, state lawmakers, and a United States senator. Harmelin was a man who valued his reputation as a tough but honest and ethical negotiator, someone accustomed to success, million-dollar deals, and discretion.
Torsella looked nervous. Harmelin did not.
“How can we help you?” the lawyer politely asked.
I unfolded the seizure warrant and handed it to Harmelin. He looked surprised and put up his hands, making it clear they wanted no part of a crime, and said, “Whatever you need.” He asked me if we planned to search Pratt’s home and offices, or the offices of his experts and lawyers. “I’ve got the addresses, if you need them,” he offered.
I shook my head. “Too risky.”
They stared at me, silent.
I said, “If we execute a search warrant and fail to find the document, the sellers might get spooked and we might not see it again for a hundred years. They’ve already threatened to take it overseas, you know.”
Harmelin and Torsella hadn’t heard that. I related the saga of Richardson’s cryptic 1995 attempt to sell the Bill of Rights to North Carolina and their mysterious visit to the experts at George Washington in 2000. I showed them Richardson’s offer letter, the one with vague threats that the document might be lost if the nervous sellers felt threatened.
Harmelin and Torsella were angry now. They felt duped and worried aloud that the whiff of scandal might somehow taint their great project. It was the perfect time for my pitch: “We want you to help us get it back. We want you to go through with the deal, have them bring the Bill of Rights here to your office, and we’ll seize it.” I tried to make it sound simple.
Torsella coughed. “You want us to go undercover?”
“Yes. It’s the only way to keep it safe and in the country. The only way.”
Harmelin stood and led Torsella into the hallway. They huddled privately.
When they returned, they said yes. Before we could get into the details, Harmelin did what any good lawyer does—he called a meeting of more lawyers to discuss contingencies, and they spent an hour coming up with things that might go wrong: What if the document is damaged in a scuffle? Who’s liable? What if someone sues the firm for participating in a fraud? What if someone calls the state bar and accuses Harmelin of lying to a fellow lawyer? What if things get out of control or leaked to the press? What if Richardson demands a blanket indemnification clause? Does our firm insurance cover that? What if North Carolina sues the firm? What if…
“Guys!” I finally interrupted. “You’re just coming up with ways it won’t work.” I turned to Harmelin and his $200 necktie. “It doesn’t matter what you say to Richardson. It’s all bullshit anyway. Just say whatever it takes to get him to bring the Bill of Rights to this room. Remember: You won’t have to keep any promises you make.”
This was a hard concept for a lawyer like Harmelin to digest, and he asked me if I wouldn’t prefer to conduct the negotiations myself. I told him it was too late in the game to inject a new player. It might spook Richardson. “I’ll play the role of the buyer,” I said. “I’ll be Bob Clay, patriotic dot-com mogul, eager to donate the Bill of Rights to the new Constitution Center.”
Reluctantly, Harmelin got on the phone with Richardson, and spent the balance of the day pretending to negotiate. At first, there was a lot of throat-clearing legal-speak and I could see it pained him to give in so easily. But by late afternoon, Harmelin began to warm to the role. By the end of the final conversation that Friday, Richardson was asking about the benefactor, the person buying the Bill of Rights for the Constitution Center.