Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey, former Congressman, environmental
champion, and partner in the San Francisco Bay Area law firm
Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, died of congestive heart failure
peacefully at his home in Winters, California, in the care of his
wife of forty-two years, Helen, and their five dogs. He was 96.
McCloskey was a rarity in American politics – his actions were
guided by his sense of justice, not by political ideology. He hated
inequity and did not hesitate to take on members of his own
political party.
“He stood for everyone without a voice and was especially
passionate about our environment -- he was afraid of nothing or
anyone who sought to take advantage of another,” said Joe Cotchett,
his law partner since 2004. “He was the epitome of a leader, as
demonstrated throughout his entire life.”
McCloskey was born in the Southern California city of Loma
Linda, to a family with deep roots in California. His
great-grandfather, orphaned during the Irish potato famine, came to
San Francisco in 1853. One grandfather was a U.S. attorney and
captain of the National Guard unit that helped control rioting in
San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. His maternal grandfather
was mayor of San Bernardino in the early 1900s.
McCloskey attended South Pasadena High School. As Valedictorian
for his graduating class, he spoke in support of the formation of
the United Nations. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1950 from
Stanford University, as well as his law degree in 1953, the latter
interrupted by his service in the US Marine Corps.
McCloskey joined the Marine Corps as an officer and famously led
his rifle platoon during some of the most intense fighting of the
Korean War, including six bayonet assaults. During his 10 months in
North Korea, 58 of the 61 members of his platoon were either killed
or wounded. He was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary
heroism, the Nation’s second-highest honor, and the highest award
given by the Marine Corps. He was also awarded the Silver Star for
bravery in combat, and two Purple Hearts.
From 1953 to 1960, he commanded a Marine Reserve Rifle Company,
and participated in counter-insurgency training. He volunteered for
the Vietnam War, however, after a fact-finding trip to the war-torn
country in 1971, he reversed course and became an outspoken
opponent of the war. He called the bombing in Cambodia a “greater
evil than we have done to any country in the world.”
“I don’t think you can impose democracy or any system of
government through the barrel of a gun without the people resenting
what you are trying to impress on them,” he told Rob Caughlan, who
produced a video biography of McCloskey which aired on PBS entitled
Leading from the Front, which was narrated by actor, friend and
fellow war veteran turned anti-war activist Paul Newman.
“I’ve known some great men in my long life, but none that ever
matched McCloskey,” said Chuck Daly, a highly-decorated rifle
platoon commander who served with McCloskey in Korea and later
became a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and
director of the Kennedy Museum. “Pete was one of the finest Marines
in the Korean War.”
McCloskey retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1974 with the
rank of Colonel.
McCloskey has lectured on constitutional and military ethics at
the Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Marine
Corps Staff College at Quantico, Virginia.
Following the Korean War, McCloskey served as Deputy District
attorney in Alameda County, then opened a law practice in 1956,
which evolved into the Silicon Valley firm of Wilson, Sonsini. He
also formed a law partnership with his old friend Lewis Butler of
San Francisco. Butler & McCloskey handled only environmental
cases. Butler said the two men made very little money, but "we
saved Bay Area tidelands from a housing tract, the town of Volcano
from becoming a cement plant, Round Valley from the proposed Corps
of Engineers Dos Rios dam and the Napa Valley from subdividing
prime vineyards."
McCloskey also served as President of the Palo Alto Bar
Association (1960), and President of the Conference of Barristers
of the State Bar (1961). In that role, he and Judge Quentin L.
Kopp, (Ret) wrote Guide to Professional Conduct for the New
Practitioner, (State Bar, 1961).
McCloskey also served as Trustee of the Santa Clara Bar
Association. He has taught Legal Ethics and Political Science as a
guest professor at both Stanford University and Santa Clara Law
School, as well as to younger students at Thacher School in
Ojai.
In 1967, Pete McCloskey ran for Congress in a special election
held following the death of the incumbent Congressman, defeating
front-runner child actress Shirley Temple Black. From the beginning
of his political career, McCloskey was a Republican maverick,
remaining independent of party ideology and pressure.
A lifelong back-packer and fly-fisherman, McCloskey, often
referred to as “a Teddy Roosevelt-style conservationist,” was
fiercely protective of wilderness. In 1970, along with US Senator
Gaylord Nelson, he co-founded the first Earth Day, and in 1973,
co-authored the Endangered Species Act. He served six years as
Congressional Delegate to the International Whaling Conference and
as Congressional Advisor to the Law of the Sea Treaty Delegation
under Chairmen John Stevenson and Elliot Richardson.
“With a twinkle in his eye but a titanium backbone, Pete
McCloskey spent his whole life campaigning for peace, justice, and
a livable future,” said Denis Hayes, who organized the first Earth
Day. “A powerful champion of endangered species, Pete, ironically,
became one: the last remaining progressive, green, anti-war
Republican.”
In 1972, McCloskey ran against President Richard Nixon for the
Republican nomination on an anti-war platform. After Nixon won
re-election, McCloskey was the first GOP lawmaker to call for
Nixon’s impeachment for obstruction of justice when details of the
Watergate scandal came out.
McCloskey, a strong proponent of universal national service,
initiated legislation for mandatory service, both civilian and
military, with no exemptions for the privileged. The bill had
strong bipartisan support but then-President Reagan announced he
would veto the bill.
Following trips to the Middle East in the late 1970s, three
Republicans, Senators Charles Percy, Congressman Paul Findley, and
Pete McCloskey, independent of one another, returned with the
strong conviction that American foreign policy in the region was
unbalanced and would prove over the long run to be disastrous for
Israel, for US interests, and for the Palestinian people. McCloskey
and a handful of other Members of Congress proposed cuts in aid to
Israel for its continuing expansion of settlements in the Occupied
Territories of the West Bank, in violation of international law.
McCloskey’s farewell speech in Congress was in support of a change
in the US’s Middle East policies to one recognizing both Israel’s
security issues and the necessity of a recognized State for the
Palestinian people.
McCloskey was re-elected to the House seven times before
unsuccessfully running for the Republican nomination to the United
States Senate in 1982, losing to Pete Wilson, who went on to defeat
Jerry Brown in the general election.
McCloskey helped end conservative Reverend Pat Robertson’s
presidential run in 1988, revealing that the televangelist was not
a “combat veteran” as he had claimed. McCloskey documented how
Robertson’s father, U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson of Virginia,
had used his political influence to get his son out of combat duty
by having him sent to Japan for safety during the war.
In 1989, McCloskey and former Congressman Paul Findley founded
the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit organization
that advocates for major changes in US policy in the Middle East to
promote both regional peace and the long-term US national interest,
with an emphasis on the need to address the plight of the
Palestinian people.
President George H.W. Bush appointed McCloskey to the Commission
on National and Community Service in 1990. McCloskey was confirmed
by the US Senate and elected as the first Chairman of the
Commission, serving until the election of President Clinton. The
Commission’s work led to the creation of Americorps by Congress in
1994.
In 1999 and 2000, Mr. McCloskey served on the Department of
Defense Advisory Board for the investigation into the No Gun Ri
massacre at the start of the Korean War in 1950, and was awarded
the Secretary's Outstanding Public Service medal for this work.
In 2004, his friend and fellow veteran, Joe Cotchett of
Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, invited McCloskey to be Of Counsel
to the firm. Cotchett, an Army veteran, liked to joke about how the
two men bonded four decades ago over their politics and military
service. Cotchett jumped out of planes while McCloskey had shrapnel
in his body from combat in Korea. Specializing in condemnation and
environmental litigation, and with over 100 jury trials under his
belt, McCloskey was delighted to join the Cotchett firm, with its
strong social and environmental justice mission.
In 2006, McCloskey again bucked his party, running against
seven-term Republican Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, accusing the
congressman and the California Republican leadership of being
corrupted by power. After losing in the primary, he endorsed
Pombo’s Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, who won the general
election by virtually the same number of voters who had voted for
McCloskey over Pombo in the primary election, and who had crossed
party lines in the general election.
Disgusted with the Bush-Cheney Administration’s Iraq war and
adoption of a policy of condoning torture in violation of the
Geneva Conventions, McCloskey became a Democrat in 2007.
McCloskey played a prominent role in a successful lawsuit filed
by him with Joe Cotchett that forced venture capitalist Vinod
Khosla to provide public access to Martins Beach, near Half Moon
Bay. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Khosla’s appeal.
Additionally, he and Joe Cotchett won a lawsuit filed on behalf of
several environmental groups against the Environmental Protection
Agency and Cargill Inc., for failing to protect Redwood City’s salt
ponds under the Clean Water Act. In April, the EPA and Cargill
withdrew appeals of the court’s ruling, which said the EPA
“misapplied the law” when it tried to repeal federal protections
for wetlands and ponds. He also took a leadership role in a lawsuit
filed by the Surfrider Foundation against pollution from pulp mills
in Northern California. McCloskey was extremely active in national
environmental lawsuits filed by the Cotchett firm. They won one of
the largest clean water actions in American history.
“Mere words cannot convey the magnitude of Pete’s environmental
legacy,” said Lennie Roberts, a legislative advocate for the
environmental group Green Foothills. “As a warrior for Planet
Earth, he has given us cleaned-up water, cleaned up the air, and
protections for endangered species.”
McCloskey, having experienced the physical and psychological
trauma of war, had great compassion for the victims of gun
violence. On Christmas 2011, he presented Rep. Jackie Speier, then
a democrat member of congress from Burlingame, with one of his
Purple Hearts for surviving being shot five times during a 1978
investigation of People’s Temple founder Jim Jones in Guyana. “For
him to give me one of his Purple Hearts, it took my breath away,”
said Speier, who has the medal framed in her office in Washington
D.C. “That’s an extraordinary gift, a gesture that makes me smile
about humanity. He’s a war hero, but incredibly humble about it.”
Speier said McCloskey was in the habit of calling her to give
advice, offer counsel, and discuss the issue of undue corporate and
dark money influence over American politics. “He’s one of America's
giants in public life,” Speier said.
“Pete was a true American hero -- a man of profound courage and
integrity who always followed his conscience to reach the right and
just result,” said Frank Pitre, his law partner.
In 2014, McCloskey returned to North Korea with a delegation
headed by Donald Gregg, former US Ambassador to South Korea, and
there met with Ji Young Choon, a three-star general he had fought
against in a bloody battle. They hugged each other and wept. “I
feel I’ve had an experience I’ve wanted to have for 64 years, which
is to shake hands with one of the young kids I fought against and
tell them how bravely they fought,” McCloskey told the San
Francisco Chronicle after the meeting. “We agreed that we didn’t
want our children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren to ever
fight in a war.” Ambassador Gregg explained the inclusion of
McCloskey on the trip: "He was known as the Beowulf of the 5th
Marines. But he wanted to make peace. So we thought, what a
terrific addition he would be. And he was tremendous."
Rob Caughlan, who campaigned for McCloskey during his first run
for congress, said his friend told him about a recurring nightmare
he had later in life in which he looked into the terrified eyes of
a group of young soldiers sitting in a ditch just before he gunned
them down. The war “had an effect on his whole life,” Caughlan
said. “The reason he was such an activist for peace was because of
what he experienced in war.”
Interviewed about McCloskey's trip, his wife Helen, who had
traveled previously to Korea with her husband to hike the very
terrain he had fought on, told the Los Angeles Times that to quell
the residue of a war fought so closely and personally, it was
necessary for McCloskey "to stand face to face with a contemporary
who had experienced the same war." She added: "For Pete,
psychologically and emotionally, to be able to embrace an enemy
combatant was healing and profound. The encounter might just allow
him to live a fuller life.”
The experience encapsulated the unique blend of courage and
compassion that has animated the career of McCloskey, a war hero
who spent the rest of his life fighting for peace, championing the
environment, and standing up for unrepresented underdogs.
He was “the bravest man I have ever known, both in war and
politics," said Butler, his former law partner.
McCloskey has written numerous books, among them The U.S.
Constitution, (BRL, 1961); and Truth and Untruth- Political Deceit
in America (Simon & Schuster, 1971). In 1991, he and his wife
published a number of books under their own label, Eaglet Books:
The Taking of Hill 610, (Eaglet Books, 1992); A Year in a Marine
Rifle Company, (Eaglet Books, 2013); An Honest Public Servant: A
Brief Biography of Manuel Lujan (Eaglet Books, 2018); and The Story
of the First Earth Day, 1970, (Eaglet Books, 2020). He and his wife
co-authored a fifth book, to be released later this year, Assault
on the USS Liberty.
McCloskey and his wife Helen have lived for the past three
decades on a working organic farm in Yolo County, from which base
they joined forces engaging in environmental causes, both serving
on a number of non-profit boards.
Intrigued by their unique marriage, McCloskey’s niece, filmmaker
Alix Blair recently premiered her documentary film entitled Helen
and the Bear. Blair said: “Just as he lived his life with courage,
action, and compassion, Pete brought those qualities to their
marriage. The film is a celebration of his open-heartedness.”
Pete is survived by his wife Helen Hooper McCloskey, and his
children from his prior marriage to Caroline Wadsworth: Nancy,
Peter, John, and Kathleen McCloskey, as well as numerous
grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
To view more images of Pete, please click HERE.
Donations in Mr. McCloskey’s honor may be made to UN Crisis
Relief (https://crisisrelief.un.org/opt-crisis) and Medicines Sans
Frontières/Doctors Without Borders
(https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/)
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