Whitney North Seymour Jr. (July 7, 1923 – June 29, 2019), known to friends as Mike Seymour, was an American politician and attorney from New York City. Born to a prominent family, Seymour graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School and served in the United States Army during World War II. He served in the New York State Senate from 1966 to 1968 and as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1970 to 1973.
As U.S. Attorney, Seymour prosecuted a number of high-profile organized crime and corruption cases. A moderate Republican, Seymour unsuccessfully sought a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1982. Seymour was an attorney for many years with the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, but left in the early 1980s to form a smaller law firm. In 1986, he was appointed as independent counsel to investigate former Reagan White House official Michael Deaver, and successfully secured a perjury conviction the next year.
Seymour co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group, in 1970. As a civic leader in New York, he served on a number of boards, and played an important role in the Municipal Art Society's push for passage of the city's 1965 Landmarks Law. Seymour wrote three books and, in later life, co-wrote a one-act play that was performed off-Broadway. He died in 2019 at age 95.
Early life and military service Seymour was born in Huntington, West Virginia, on July 7, 1923, the son of Whitney North Seymour (1901–1983) and Lola Vickers Seymour (d. 1975).Lola Vickers Seymour, 74, Wife of Bar Leader, Dead, The New York Times (November 25, 1975). He grew up in the Manhattan borough of New York City, in a rowhouse in the Greenwich Village.James M. Lindgren, Preserving South Street Seaport: The Dream and Reality of a New York Urban Renewal District (NYU Press, 2014), page 16. Seymour's father was a prominent attorney who served as assistant solicitor general during the Herbert Hoover administration. Seymour's brother was academician Thaddeus Seymour.Whitney North Seymour Sr., a champion of civil liberties, United Press International (May 21, 1983).
Seymour graduated from the Kent School in Connecticut in 1941. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, serving as an artillery officer in the Pacific theater during World War II, and resigning in 1945 with the rank of captain.
After the war, Seymour attended college at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude with a AB in 1947. He then attended Yale Law School, earning a LLB degree in 1950.
Career Early career in law and politics Seymour joined the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 1950; his father had been a longtime partner at the firm. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from 1953 to 1956. Seymour then returned to private practice before being appointed, three years later, as counsel to the State Commission on New York City Governmental Operations.Nicholas Gage, Seymour to Quit As U.S. Attorney, New York Times (January 24, 1972). His first political position was as a Republican precinct captain in the 1950s.Oral history of Whitney North Seymour, Jr. from July 29, 2006, from the New York Preservation Archive Project.
Seymour ran unsuccessfully for the New York State Assembly in 1958, challenging William F. Passannante. During his campaign, he called for the preservation of the Jefferson Market Courthouse. After losing the race, he was appointed counsel to the New York State Temporary Committee On the Governmental Operations of the City of New York (nicknamed the "Little Hoover Commission") and became active in the Greenwich Village Association. He later became active in the Park Association of New York City, serving as its president (the association later merged into The Parks Council). In this role, he criticized Robert Moses's projects and campaigned against proposals to put an underground parking garage below Madison Square Park.
He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1966 to 1968, sitting in the 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures.Robert D. McFadden, Edward I. Koch, a Mayor as Brash, Shrewd and Colorful as the City He Led, Dies at 88, New York Times (February 1, 2013). While in the Senate, he sponsored the legislation to create the South Street Seaport Museum, persuading Governor Nelson Rockefeller to sign it despite the objections of his brother David Rockefeller.
He was the Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives in the New York's 17th congressional district in November 1968, running against Democrat Ed Koch in the "silk stocking" district. In the Republican primary election, Seymour eked out a win against S. William Green, receiving 12,291 votes to Green's 10,851.Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City (Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 78–80. To maintain his nearly perfect record of attendance in the state Senate, Seymour also missed many opportunities to make campaign appearances during the primary campaign. In the general election, Koch and Seymour differed more on matters of style than on issues of policy; Koch was an adept and indefatigable campaigner with a constant public presence, while the patrician Seymour disliked street politics. Koch spoke about his record of engaging in protests and pickets (on causes such as support for the Delano grape strike and opposition to the Vietnam War) while Seymour that he had "never joined any kind of protest march or demonstration" except for a march to ban automobiles from Central Park. Although he received the endorsement of Mayor John V. Lindsay, Seymour lost the race; Koch won with 48% of the vote (on both the Democratic and Liberal Party ballot lines), while Seymour received 45% of the vote and Conservative Party candidate Richard J. Callahan received 5.8% of the vote. Seymour thus became the first Republican in three decades to lose the congressional election in the "silk stocking" district.
Involvement in founding of the NRDC In 1970, Seymour was among the group that co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and served on its board.Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (revised ed.: Island Press, 2005), pp. 193–94.Jon Bowermaster, "Green Giants: On the Front Lines with Two Rival Guardians," New York (April 16, 1990). The NRDC's establishment was partially an outgrowth of the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, the Storm King case, in which Seymour was involved. The case centered on Con Ed's plan to build the world's largest hydroelectric facility at Storm King Mountain. The proposed facility would pump vast amounts of water from the Hudson River to a reservoir, and release it through turbines to generate electricity at peak demand.McGee Young, "The Price of Advocacy: Mobilization and Maintenance in Advocacy Organizations" in Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action (eds. Aseem Prakash & Mary Kay Gugerty), pp. 40–42. A dozen concerned citizens organized the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference in opposition to the project, citing its environmental impact, and the group, represented by Seymour, his law partner Stephen Duggan, and David Sive, sued the Federal Power Commission, and successfully achieved a ruling that groups such as Scenic Hudson and other environmentalist groups had standing to challenge the FPC's administrative rulings. Realizing that continued environmental litigation would require a nationally organized, professionalized group of lawyers and scientists, Duggan, Seymour, and Sive obtained funding from the Ford Foundation and joined forces with Gus Speth and other recent Yale Law School graduates of the class of 1969 to form the NRDC, with John H. Adams as the group's first staff member, Duggan as its first chairman, and Seymour, Laurance Rockefeller, and others as board members.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York He was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1970 to 1973, replacing Robert Morgenthau. As U.S. Attorney, Seymour and his criminal division chief, Harold Baer Jr., took action to reduce a large backlog of criminal cases in the Southern District.Arnold H. Lubasch, New Procedures Help a Federal Court Reduce Backlog of Criminal Cases, New York Times (March 15, 1971).Craig R. Whitney, Seymour Gets 900 Indictments in 10 Months as U.S. Attorney and Strives to Cut Court Jam as Pledged, New York Times (November 9, 1970). As U.S. Attorney, Seymour also prosecuted New York City Police Department corruption and misconduct cases brought by the Knapp Commission. Under Seymour, former Richard Nixon Cabinet members John N. Mitchell and Maurice H. Stans were indicted on charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions from fugitive Robert Vesco, but both were acquitted. He also oversaw the prosecutions of a number of organized crime figures, including Frank Costello, and corrupt public officials, including former State Senator Seymour R. Thaler.Howard Kurtz & Saundra Saperstein, Seymour Argued Pentagon Papers Suit, Washington Post (May 30, 1986). Seymour was, however, initially skeptical about the practical use of the then-new Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act; in a meeting with G. Robert Blakey, the law professor who pioneered the act, Seymour dismissed RICO as a waste of time.Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (Thomas Dunne Books, 2005), pp. 180–81. Later, after RICO's value in fighting organized crime was demonstrated, Seymour acknowledged that "in hindsight we were one hundred percent wrong."
As U.S. Attorney, Seymour represented the United States government in seeking an injunction to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers; the United States Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the Times in the case New York Times Co. v. United States. Seymour's longtime friend Powell Pierpoint said that Seymour "represented the government like a good soldier, though I don't think he personally believed in the case. ... He made a damn good argument out of a poor case. He presented the argument himself. That's the kind of fellow Mike is." Later, however, Seymour was critical of the Times handling of the case; in a 1994 article in the New York State Bar Journal, he wrote that he remained "appalled at the arrogance and irresponsibility displayed by the news media in setting up a totally unnecessary confrontation over publication of stolen classified documents relating to U.S. policies in Vietnam."Whitney North Seymour, Jr., "Press Paranoia—Delusions of Persecution in the Pentagon Papers Case," New York State Bar Journal (February 1994). In Seymour's view, from a practical perspective, the government had "lost the battle but won the war" in the Pentagon Papers cases, since the Times and Washington Post, following the Supreme Court's decision, did not publish material whose release could damage national security, such as the "secret Defense Department study directly affecting military and intelligence operations and secret diplomatic efforts to achieve peace."
Return to private practice and 1982 Senate election After stepping down in the U.S. Attorney post in 1973, Seymour returned to private practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.