Sitting in
The world was moved by the sight of Ali lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta with a palsied hand in 1996. Ali, once a taunting and boastful heavyweight champion, had become, in his 50s, an icon of nobility and humanity. He had won a place on a Wheaties box and in America’s heart.
Hirschfeld, meanwhile, was facing a second round of criminal charges. Four months after Ali’s poignant Olympics appearance, Hirschfeld fled the country, on the run from the law.
The two men later became embroiled in a lawsuit over the rights to Ali’s life story. But Ali remained a friend, Hirschfeld insisted in his suicide letter. The Champ had regularly greeted Hirschfeld’s mother with a kiss, attended one son’s bar mitzvah and is godfather to another.
“The last time I spoke to Ali was many, many months ago when he happened to be on the phone with my son Todd, who connected me on a 3-party call. He told me he loved me and missed me and wanted to see me again.”
After Hirschfeld’s arrest in October, he said, Ali and his wife, Lonnie , “reached out compassionately” through Todd to Hirschfeld and his wife:
“They asked him to tell Loretta and me that they love us and that they are praying for us. Loretta had tears in her eyes when she saw me and conveyed that message. … Muhammad has been a better godfather to Todd than I’ve been to my own goddaughter, unfortunately.”
The lawsuit eventually was settled, but as death approached, Hirschfeld regretted that it had ever been filed:
“Muhammad Ali is an American treasure and I love him.”
Exactly when and how Hirschfeld and Ali met is a mystery.
In the late 1970s, they were traveling in the same celebrity circles. Hirschfeld had conducted legal work for Donald Nixon, the brother of former President Richard M. Nixon. Using those connections, Hirschfeld began to socialize with highly placed Republicans and GOP loyalists, among them actor John Wayne.
Hirschfeld was introduced to Ali as Wayne’s attorney at a dinner in Southern California in 1979. As Hirschfeld’s mother, Mary, recalls it, her son represented the actor for a short time. Hirschfeld reportedly impressed Ali during that encounter.
They later met again, by chance, in London. Ali was there for a photo shoot. He was to be the poster boy for the annual report for the Arab-owned Bank of Credit and Commerce International. By 1980, they had become friends.
It was an unlikely pairing – Ali, the larger-than-life boxing legend, exemplar of pop culture and convert to Islam, and Hirschfeld, the diminutive Jewish financier and lawyer. Some speculated the aging Ali saw a bit of himself as a young man in Hirschfeld – brash, savvy, quick-witted. They shared a love for the “sweet science,” the sport that had made Ali a legend. Hirschfeld had been a boxer in high school and college.
The two became inseparable friends. Ali, once famous for his rapid-fire banter and rollicking rhyming couplets, was slowed by Parkinson’s syndrome, speaking infrequently and in hushed tones.
Hirschfeld became Ali’s mouthpiece – and, according to some accounts, even his voice.
“He’s saved Ali,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, an acquaintance of both men, once said of Hirschfeld. “He watches over him like a brother.”
In an interview with The Washington Post, Ali once called Hirschfeld “the best friend a man could have.” And Hirschfeld said of the former boxing champion: “I put a shield around Ali. You have to. He was a symbol of the times – a champion of a lot of causes outside the ring. He’s entitled to stature outside the ring: He’s bigger than the sport.”
On Oct. 2, 1980, Ali stepped into the ring against Larry Holmes at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, hoping to capture a fourth heavyweight title, at age 38. Hirschfeld had helped arrange financing for the $12 million event. Hirschfeld’s sister, Esther Cohen, remembers the night clearly.
By the early 1980s, Hirschfeld had returned to Hampton Roads from his self-imposed exile in California and maintained a short but exclusive list of clients, Ali among them.
The Champ became Todd’s godfather and was seen regularly with Richard in Hampton Roads. He attended a bar mitzvah for Hirschfeld’s eldest son, Kevin.
He wowed a black-tie crowd in June 1982 when he stepped from a limousine at the Old Cavalier Hotel, where Hirschfeld was throwing a lavish bash for friends and business associates.
After Ali’s retirement, he and Hirschfeld became partners in several business ventures, including a Virginia Beach hotel, a sports-car operation in Halifax County and a boxing camp in Virginia Beach.
The sports-car complex and the boxing camp failed, and Hirschfeld drew sanctions from the Securities and Exchange Commission for financial improprieties in the latter enterprise.
Ali and Hirschfeld rode horses together at Hirschfeld’s farm near Charlottesville, where Ali lived for a time, and Ali regularly consorted with Hirschfeld’s business associates in Virginia Beach.
Ali sometimes stayed at Hirschfeld’s mother’s Virginia Beach apartment to avoid the crush of the curious. Upon greeting Mary Hirschfeld, The Champ would pick the tiny woman up and plant a kiss on her cheek.
The tandem of Ali and Hirschfeld regularly dropped in on political luminaries during the 1980s, sometimes to pose for photos or for Ali to sign autographs. During one such visit, Ali autographed a pair of boxing gloves for Henry Hudson, then a prosecutor in Virginia. Hirschfeld would later come to regard Hudson as an adversary after Hirschfeld declined to support his bid to become a federal judge.
Hudson had chaired a commission appointed by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese in the mid-1980s to study the effects of pornography in American society. Hudson had written the commission’s 1,960-page report.
After Ali autographed the gloves for Hudson, Hirschfeld wrote, “Henry presented him with an inscribed, autographed copy of his paperback Meese Commission Report. … When we left his office, Ali looked at me and remarked, ‘That guy wants to be a judge?’ And he then proceeded to toss Henry’s autographed commission report into the first trash receptacle he passed.”
Hudson, now a federal judge, declined to return phone calls regarding the incident. Muhammad and Lonnie Ali also declined to comment on Hirschfeld. An Ali spokesman said only that they “extend their condolences” to the Hirschfeld family.
Through the years, Hirschfeld shielded Ali from those who sought his magical name to market everything from cologne to shopping centers. But some were convinced that it was Hirschfeld, and not the would-be hucksters he fended off, who ultimately betrayed Ali’s trust.
In 1988, the Atlanta Constitution reported that an impostor using Ali’s name and voice had made hundreds of calls to politicians, congressional aides and journalists. The “Ali voice” on the phone knowledgeably discussed topics the boxer had never shown an interest in, such as the Dixiecrats of 1948.
Hirschfeld, who was said to have done a creditable impersonation of Ali, denied he had made the calls. Ali and Hirschfeld appeared on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, where The Champ, giving his friend a squeeze, denounced the Hirschfeld critics.
In an interview with the late State Sen. Emily Couric in the 1980s, Hirschfeld sought to dispel the aura of mystery that seemed to engulf his escapades.
“There is more apparent intrigue than real intrigue,” he said.
But in the end, Hirschfeld came clean:
“I was always a sucker for mystique.”
One day in February 1985, JoAnn Cardon-Glass got a phone call from her brother.
“You might see me on TV in a couple days with Muhammad Ali,” Hirschfeld said. “Don’t be scared. Everything will be all right. Honor bright.”
“Honor bright” was Hirschfeld family code for a sacred vow. Cardon-Glass recalled her father saying once that he had never known Richard to tell an “honor-bright” lie.
A few days later, Cardon-Glass watched on TV as Ali got off a plane in the Middle East, followed by her brother. They were there to help secure the release of American hostages being held in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, the mission was not state-sponsored.
But the two men were there at the behest of the State Department, Hirschfeld claims in his suicide letter. That was confirmed by a former CIA agent who played a role in the mission and now works as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency. The ex-agent asked not to be identified.
Ali and Hirschfeld made the trip not only to help free hostages, but also “to gather intelligence on the Hezbollah,” the Lebanese “party of God” terrorist organization, the ex-agent said.
“They were there to use Ali’s considerable influence in the Muslim community to gain access to mosques” and other locations where Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, held forth.
As a result of the mission, the U.S. government obtained “specific information about the location of Hezbollah operatives in Beirut,” the former agent said.
In his letter, Hirschfeld described how he was briefed on the venture by State Department officials and later received a phone call from then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Hirschfeld and Ali were staying in Washington at the time. Bush, Hirschfeld wrote, instructed the men to go to Syria instead of volatile Beirut.
After Hirschfeld hung up , Ali declared he would have none of it, as Hirschfeld tells it:
“‘That does it, Richie. We’re going to Beirut. I’ve never been afraid to go nowhere, and I ain’t scared of nobody!’ And he was being honest. To Ali, going into Sheik Fadlallah’s headquarters to try to negotiate release of the hostages was no more dangerous than a midnight stroll through Harlem – something Muhammad Ali would do without any trepidation at all.”
It would not be Hirschfeld’s last, or boldest, foray into the world of international intrigue.
About this series
On the morning of Jan. 11, while awaiting trial on charges that included conspiracy and obstruction of justice, Richard M. Hirschfeld hanged himself in the laundry room of a Miami prison. Two days later, Virginian-Pilot reporter Bill Burke received a 31-page handwritten letter from Hirschfeld.
The letter apparently was composed over several days just prior to Hirschfeld taking his life. Its main purpose: one final plea from the flamboyant lawyer-financier to have his name cleared. Burke had struck up a relationship, primarily via e-mail, with Hirschfeld in 2000 while the Norfolk native was a federal fugitive. They corresponded off and on for nearly four years, hoping one day to meet in person.
This series is based on the letter, independent research and interviews with dozens of Hirschfeld cohorts, family members and law enforcement officials. This is the 3rd of 7 chapters
Reach Bill Burke at 446-2589 or bill.burke@pilotonline.com.
