TWO OF TWO
DATE REVIEWED: 8/15/23
TITLE: The Pelican Brief (based on John Grisham’s book)
BOX OFFICE RATED: PG-13 (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 1993 Warner Bros.
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON:
The real Alice then met up with Darby at a bar and told her that she was able to get into Darby’s apartment but Darby’s computer was gone and so were all her floppy disks and her red expandable files. Darby asked Alice to do her a favor and attend the memorial service tomorrow and spread the word that Darby was staying with her aunt in Denver and she wouldn’t be back until fall. Darby said she had the money her dad left her after Alice asked if she was okay financially, and Darby didn’t want to answer Alice’s question about who she was hiding from and told Alice that she better leave. There was a man in the bar who tried to get Alice to stick around as she looked more like a man dressed in her ballcap with her underneath her cap and baggy clothes, but she didn’t want to stay and walked out into the busy streets. The man looked at his watch and then ran after Darby asking her to marry him for five minutes trying to stall her while somebody made his way there to her location. The bar guy then made a scene and started singing and the crowd seemed to enjoy it, and then the man from the elevator showed up just as Darby ran off and the other man pointed subtly in the direction that Darby went. Darby asked a very muscular wrestler-type man to help her and she ran, and he grabbed ahold of the man chasing her but the little guy actually got the better of the bigger guy until a couple of others joined in on the fight and held the undercover possible agent man. A government agent dressed in plain clothes watched the scene unfold and then went to find Darby. In another hotel room, the same guy in the dress suit from earlier slipped another envelope under the door after Khamel asked for Mr. Edwin F. Sneller. Khamel took the envelope and went into the room next door, and inside the envelope was a picture of Darby as his next target. At the memorial service, Alice told everyone loudly what her friend asked to to about Darby staying with her aunt in Colorado while Gavin stood outside the door listening. An agent noticed that Gavin waited for somebody outside the church as Darby watched from a window with a scarf around her head. Later that night, Darby called Gavin at his Westin hotel room and he told her to name a location to meet and he would have three agents come with him to pick her up, and she said she didn’t think the FBI was involved and Gavin replied that they were his friends so they weren’t and they could get her out of New Orleans that night and into Washington the next day and he promised that she would personally meet Voyles and they could go from there. Darby gave instructions for Gavin to take the trolley to Riverwalk at noon the following day and wear a long sleeve shirt and red baseball cap and he needed to wait at the riverside bandstand and Darby would find him. She also got his measurements and said she would meet him the following day. However, when Gavin got in the shower, it was revealed that there was a recording device underneath the table hidden out of sight. After Gavin got out of the shower, the mirror started sliding open as he turned on the TV. He then sat on the bed brushing his teeth and listening to the TV, and then blood squirted all over the TV because someone used a silenced gun to shoot Gavin dead. After the shooting, Khamel unplugged the recording device to take with him and then took a piece of chocolate that Gavin didn’t eat but had opened out of its wrapper. Khamel ate the chocolate as he listened to the conversation between Darby and Gavin. The assassin the next morning used the bedding and stuffed it inside his shirt to make him look like he was 180 pounds and fit the description of Gavin so he could go in place of Gavin to meet Darby. In her bra, Darby was getting ready and put her hair in braids (Laura Ingalls or Anne of Green Gables) as Khamel got ready and put his gun in his pocket and practiced losing his accent and talking like Gavin. Darby and Khamel (dressed as Gavin) walked away holding hands as another man in the large crowd watched them and they got a ticket to go on an amusement ride, and as they walked Khamel slowly pulled his gun out of his pocket. He concealed the gun out of sight under his shirt and inched it over closer to Darby but before Khamel (Gavin) could pull the trigger somebody shot him in the back of the head with blood squirting on Darby’s face. People stopped and stared in horror for a moment and then they all scattered and ran from the sight leaving dead Khamel lying on the ground. A man who went by Mr. Sneller then called in to the hit man in his office and told him that Khamel was dead and they didn’t know who did it and Darby was on the run and they lost her but would find her. Darby called Reporter Gray again in D.C. and told him there was another murder and that the friend from the FBI of her friend that she gave the Pelican Brief to was killed yesterday and she knew that because she was holding his hand when he was shot in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight (but that wasn’t the real guy because he was already murdered by the assassin who then dressed up like him and was also killed). Darby said she was in New York and asked Gray when he could come there, but he didn’t believe her story and needed something more convincing because they got many calls from people claiming they had tips on who killed the Justices. Darby then gave Gray the name of her friend killed in the car explosion (Thomas Callahan) and it happened in New Orleans and that should be enough. Gray then asked for the name of the friend that worked at the FBI and she told him it was Gavin Verheek. Gray wanted her to confirm that was FBI Director Voyles’ Chief Counsel and then Darby said that was more than enough. Washington D.C. reporter Gray said he would definitely be on a plane that afternoon to New York to meet with her, and Darby gave him specific instructions. In a secluded park in New York, Gray answered the payphone at a specific time that evening. He arrived at Darby’s hotel room later on and she wouldn’t let him in until he confirmed he followed her instructions. Inside the hotel room, Darby told Gray that he must think she was crazy, and he admitted he did until he checked New Orleans and Callahan was killed exactly as she said and the FBI found Verheek’s body two days before in a hotel room early in the morning and he had been dead for at least eight hours. Darby realized that couldn’t be because she was holding Verheek’s hand when he died, and when Gray asked if Darby wanted to talk about the Brief, she said everybody she told about the Brief was dead and reporter Gray said he would take his chances. Darby told Gray he couldn’t under any circumstances use her name or reveal where or how he got his information or publish anything until she had left the country. He said he agreed unless he could convince her not to leave, and she said he couldn’t. Gray asked to use a tape recorder to record their conversation and Darby said that was fine, and they had their pow-wow. Meanwhile, Coal showed the Pelican Brief to Matthew Barr and he told Barr that the President spoke to Voyles about it and the Director agreed to leave it alone for a while. Coal said they thought it was just another shot in the dark but now he wasn’t so sure which was the reason why the President wanted Voyles to back off. Barr said that was obstruction of justice, and Coal replied assuming the Brief turned out to be true and Barr said if it did, Coal would be the fall guy. Coal added he wouldn’t be the only one and Barr commented it was the old Nixon two-step. Barr said to look on the hopeful side, Irangate and Iraqgate, and there was a good chance it wouldn’t even come out. Coal asked what was up with Gray Grantham, and Barr replied they got his car phone but they hadn’t been inside his house yet because the cleaning lady almost caught them. Coal said that Grantham knew about the Brief and he called three White House aides earlier that day and God knows who else. During the interview, Darby said she remembered a piece that “Frontline,” did a year ago about the young lawyer who originally filed the suit. They said he had committed suicide, but his family thought it was foul play, and after the assassinations Darby called his family and they said he had a depressive problem years before but medication had taken care of it. Darby also spoke with his doctor, and the doctor confirmed what the family said and they were told the police they were convinced it was not suicide but the police closed the investigation. That was why Darby was gung-ho about solving the murders of the Justices, and they ended the interview and Gray shut the recorder off and told Darby he was going over his notes while they were still fresh in his head and told her to call him when she woke up. Darby asked Gray to sleep on the sofa because she didn’t want to be alone with people after her and he said he would. She told him her real name was Darby Shaw and the reason she picked reporter Gray was because her (now dead) boyfriend Professor Callahan was a big fan of his. Gray listened to the cassette, where they discussed Victor Mattiece and how he was all about money, power and influence and how he made and lost several fortunes drilling for oil in south Louisiana. In 1979, his oil company punched some holes in Terrebonne Parish and hit a lot of oil. Mattiece knew he needed government permission to dredge a channel through the marshlands to get the equipment in and the oil out. Mattiece was also the great campaign contributor for the President, and the government gave permission for him to go through the endangered marshes. Mattiece was that close to a billion dollars when Green Fund, an obscure environmental outfit, trotted down to the U.S. District court in Lafayette and filed a lawsuit to stop the entire operation. Mattiece spared no expense to win the lawsuit and Darby believed there wasn’t a top law firm between Houston and New Orleans that he hadn’t hired. By the time the two Green Fund lawyers waded in, the joint ventures limited partnerships and corporate associations form an impenetrable maze that made Mattiece invisible. Luckily for the Green Fund’s lawsuit, the heart of the new oil reserve was near a natural refuge for waterfowl: Osprey, egrets, pelicans, ducks, cranes, and geese. Darby went on to say that the pelican became the hero after 30 years of contamination by DDT and other pesticides and the Louisiana brown pelican was on the brink of extinction. Green Fund seized the bird and enlisted experts from around the country to testify on its behalf, and it took seven years for the pelican suit to go to trial in Lake Charles. The 3-man jury, caring less about the pelicans than jobs, voted in favor of Mattiece, but the judge ruled to keep the injunction against drilling because he thought Green Fund had proven its point about the pelican, a federally-protected species, and it was apparent that Green Fund would appeal. From the trial level, the case would be appealed to the Court of Appeals in New Orleans in a month. Darby thought the court might reverse, and then the fun started because if either side was unhappy with the fifth circuit, they could appeal to the Supreme Court. From that day, it would take 3 to 5 to years for the Supreme Court to rule on that case. Gray added that Rosenberg would be dead from natural causes by then, but another President could be in the White House when he died so if you’re Mattiece and you don’t mind killing a couple of Supremes, now’s the time to kill them when you can predict their replacement. It was Jensen because he shared one piece of common ground with Rosenberg, which was protecting the environment. Gray wrote Garcia’s name on the New York Marriott stationary and drew an arrow between it and “law firm,” which he circled because he was trying to figure out how Garcia fit into the picture of what Darby told him. Reporter Gray then drew another line from law firm to Mattiece at the top and above Mattiece was a direct line to the White House. Back in D.C., Coal pulled out a VHS cassette tape marked “Property of PBS,” and said f-ing PBS and watched the PBS Frontline video. The next morning, Darby told Gray that there were at least two law firms, White & Blazevich and Brim, Stearns & Somebody, in D.C. that Mattiece hired in addition to all the others. Gray replied that there was a lawyer who wanted to tell him something about the murders, but he was too afraid and always backed out. Gray did have the lawyer’s picture, and when Darby asked how Gray didn’t want to answer but if he worked at one of the law firms it could be the confirmation that they needed. He wanted to take Darby to Washington with him, otherwise there would be a cover-up because he investigated a reporter who did a piece on it two years before called “Violations of Campaign Financing Laws,” when Gray called into the Herald morgue. The reporter found out that Mattiece was the biggest contributor by far to the President’s campaign, but it was hidden under a lot of individual names and PAC’s and corporations. In the piece that they ran was the President and Mattiece at a hunting lodge together looking like pals (they didn’t know the picture was taken) and Gray went on to say that if the Pelican Brief was accurate, then the President would lose any chance of reelection and the people surrounding the President wouldn’t let that happen. Gray said he checked with all of the sources he had in D.C. and they all confirmed that the Brief didn’t exist, and that Darby was the only witness who could prove there was a Brief and if she disappeared so did justice. Gray asked Darby if that was what Callahan would want and then he added that the guilty party would do anything not to be found out. Gray asked Darby where she could hide, and she told him to go back to Washington and left the room. The Parklane security guard at the White House met up with Gray again back in D.C. and told reporter Gray that the officials were all in a tizzy fit over the questions Gray was asking about the Brief, and as a result the Parklane guard was put on a 90-day medical leave even though he was not ill. He warned Gray as he walked away that he had never seen it that bad. At the Washington newspaper headquarters, Gray’s boss said he wasn’t going to let Gray do anything more with the murder story but he was going to send reporter Gray to Arkansas to check out the potential candidate for replacement Justice. Gray’s boss, Smith, gave him another chance even after he told Gray he couldn’t go off supposition and needed facts and sent Gray to his little cabin to take a couple of days off and then if he had other leads by the start of the new week then his editor might keep him on the case since Gray had no more contacts in D.C. and the two people that he was talking to decided to back out of it (Gray also discovered another connection that Thomas was a clerk for Rosenberg twenty years before). Gray was in his cabin in the woods watching the Frontline video about the lawyer who may have been murdered or committed suicide, and dogs were barking outside. Gray went outside in the pouring rain with his gun to investigate and saw a flashlight in the woods so he asked who was out there, and lo and behold, Darby yelled it was she. Earlier, Darby had left Gray a message saying she was out of the country and apologized for not being able to help him. Now, as she sat by the fireplace she told reporter Gray that was what she wanted people to think she had done in the event Gray’s phone was bugged. Darby explained that she called and talked to Gray’s editor at work and told him that she was Gray’s sister Mary and she couldn’t find her brother so his boss Smith told her the address where Gray was staying at the cabin. Darby added that he wasn’t the only one who could do research. Meanwhile, the President exited a church and thanked the reverend for the service and then the press hounded him and he told them they wouldn’t hear from him until the weekend was over. The President got in his limo and told Coal that moving the body was the best thing they could do, and Coal replied that the President couldn’t announce the nominations the following week. It was because of the Pelican Brief made forced a change of plans, and Coal told the President they believed that the reporter Grantham had gotten ahold of a copy of the Brief. The President replied that Mattiece would sue the pants off them if they tried to publish that, and Coal replied not if it was true. The President then was flabbergasted the Coal thought the Pelican Brief was true. Coal went and summed it for the President what reporter Gray probably would write in his article “A man the President knew and took millions from paid money to have two Supreme Justices killed so his pal, the President, could appoint more reasonable men to the bench so that his oil could be harvested.” Coal added that if Voyles said the President told him to back off the case (which he already did), then they faced an obstruction charge. The President said “Oh, Jesus!” and Coal said there was a way to handle it which was appointing two nature-lovers to the court, good environmentalists who would kill Mattiece and his oil field. The President would then have a meeting with FBI Director Voyles, and in the presence of the Attorney General, the President would demand an immediate investigation into Mattiece. Coal said he would leak copies of the Brief to every reporter in town and then they would ride out the storm, and he added that he was working on keeping the information from coming out because the President was very concerned about it going public. Coal told the President not to ask how. In the next scene, reporter Gray had his editor boss Smith Keen meet him at Mt. Vernon, George and Martha’s place, and Gray confirmed that bird girl was there and they were both looking for Garcia and were staying in different hotels. Smith wasn’t happy because he wasn’t able to get in touch with Gray, and Gray replied he was staying at the Marbury Hotel and not to use his name and Smith had him write it down. As Smith drove the car, Gray told Smith to get off at the next exit because they had a tan car two cars back that had been following them for a while. When Gray opened his hotel room door, a man jumped over the balcony railing to make a speedy getaway, so Gray ran went downstairs and took a cab to go to Georgetown Law School because the man got away from him and another man got in a cab behind Gray and followed him. Outside the law school was another protest with people wanting to keep their guns, and inside Gray told Darby to meet him by the stacks as he walked by her who was doing her research trying to figure out which law firm Garcia was from. Gray told Darby that someone broke into his hotel room and Smith Keen was the only person who knew where he was staying. In her hotel room, Darby impersonated a firm worker and called the Georgetown Law School placement office and told them she was Susan Johnson, a partner with White & Blazevich, and they were trying to reconstruct some payroll records and she wanted to know the names of the students that clerked there last summer. A little while later, Gray showed up at the placement office to pick up the envelope of the names and the lady asked him to sign for it as Mr. Steven because he said he was a representative of White & Blazevich (Reporters and their associate connections and shady sources need to be held accountable for breaking the law, endangering lives, and interfering with criminal investigations by tampering with evidence). While Darby called the numbers of the students on the list, Gray went to the receptionist and picked up the class schedules of two students telling her his real name from the Washington Herald and said he had some questions for them. Gray and Darby went through their list and asked students if they recognized the man in the picture who was Garcia that Gray had taken a picture of in the phonebooth. When Gray went back to ask for one more student from the school’s receptionist, she replied that one of the students Gray talked to called White & Blazevich who called the Dean and the Dean said there were no more class schedules for reporters. There was a male student listening in on the conversation who ran after Gray, and he said he knew Edward and that his parents took him out of school for a while and he was at Parklane Hospital being detoxified. Gray went to the hospital and asked the receptionist there to see Edward Linney, and he gave the receptionist his real information and she said that the law school didn’t run the hospital so he wouldn’t get to see Edward. Gray asked for the administrator and the receptionist left to find him while Darby snuck into the hospital and went to find Edward. The administrator told Gray that visitation was only allowed on the weekend, and then it was only to family as Darby found Edward’s room and knocked and went inside without waiting for a response. She showed a picture of Garcia to Edward, and he couldn’t remember the man’s name but he told her that the man worked in the oil and gas section on the 9th floor. Edward recalled the name was Morgan, and Darby thanked him and left and a security officer spotted her coming out of Edward’s room. She told the guard that she was visiting her brother Edward, and he came out of the room and confirmed Darby was his sister and told the officer to leave her alone. Downstairs, Gray stalled the administrator and discussed high healthcare costs with him until he saw Darby sneak around the stairwell out the door and Gray abruptly ended the conversation and left as well. As Darby drove the car, Gray looked in his notes and was able to identify attorney Curtis Morgan with oil and gas. This time, Darby wore dress clothes and went to White & Blazevich, where she introduced herself as Dorothy Blythe to see Curtis Morgan. The receptionist was a bit startled and told Darby to have a seat while the receptionist walked off hurriedly. A man then appeared behind Darby and asked what the nature of business was that she had with Morgan because he was dead and had been shot and mugged by street punks a week before. He added that his company had no record of a Dorothy Blythe ever making an appointment with Morgan. Security was called and they wanted identification from Darby, and after they told her to come with them because they had more questions for her she turned around and left immediately go get away from them and said she wanted to further business with them. As Darby ran into two more thugs in the parking garage, she got past them and jumped in Gray’s car and they stared after the car as Gray sped off with Darby upset telling Gray they killed Morgan. Gray pulled down a scary alley because Darby said she couldn’t breathe in the car because everybody was dying around her and she had a breakdown after she got out and Gray consoled her and told her everything would be okay. Gray talked to Smith and got the information that the story was run a week before in the paper and Gray got the address of the Morgan house. Darby rolled over in bed and told Gray she was going with him, but he responded that he wanted her to leave because he was deeply concerned for her safety. Gray told Darby he wanted her to reach age 25 so he didn’t want her to come along but she insisted on coming. They went to Morgan’s house, where his wife’s elderly dad answered the door and told them to get the hell out and he didn’t want to talk to them even after Gray explained that Morgan called him three times before his death and Gray didn’t think it was accidental. Gray left his number, and across the street were two undercover agents watching them including the man who chased Darby. They followed them back to the hotel, and in the middle of the night Mrs. Morgan ended up calling Gray and asked to meet with him. Gray was in a different room then Darby, so he left not telling her he was leaving and returned to the Morgan house. Mrs. Morgan and Gray discussed how Mrs. Morgan and her dad went to the lock box at the bank and looked at some of Curtis’s files and there was nothing unusual. She mentioned on Saturday going through her husband’s desk in their bedroom and noticed something unusual, which was a key to another lock box at Riggs Bank and the Morgans had never banked there. She hadn’t felt up to it to go check and see what was in the box, and Gray suggested she do that and said it could be a clue to who killed Curtis. At this point, it was unclear if Mrs. Morgan was working with the feds because she out of the blue called Gray and as they conversed the agents sat in a a car nearby listening on a recording device to the entire conversation. Mrs. Morgan repeated things Gray already said and wanted to be clear that he was stating specifically that he believed, when nobody else did, that her husband was killed because he knew information about the assassinations of the Justices. Mrs. Morgan said her daughter lost one parent and she didn’t want her to lose another, and Gray offered to check the lock box for Mrs. Morgan at the bank. She was hesitant because they wouldn’t give the information to anybody but Curtis’s wife, and Gray responded that he had a trustworthy female partner working with him and she (Darby) could use Mrs. Morgan’s identity. Mrs. Morgan said she had one condition and that was if Gray found anything that incriminated her husband in any way then he couldn’t use it and Gray gave his word. The next day, the two people followed Darby and Gray as they arrived at the bank. Another man drove a car into the parking garage and he searched for Gray’s car and found it. The man broke into the car using a jimmy to unlock the door and planted a bomb underneath the steering wheel. Darby gave her name as Sara Ann Morgan at 225 Willow Road, Bethesda to the female bank worker as another (crooked) woman came in behind Darby and wanted to rent a safety deposit box. The older female banker told her to have a seat and she would be right there, but after she left the room with Darby to go into the vault, the female suspect waited in the seat that Darby had sat in. The box was unlocked and the older lady went back to her office to help the other female, and there was a VHS and envelope with paperwork in it that Darby took out of the box. As Darby left, the other female got up from her chair and ingnored the bank lady and followed Darby out. Gray waited outside on the bank steps and walked with Darby to the parking garage to geth the car as the crooked female and her male companion followed them. Gray and Darby got in their car and didn’t’ turn it on but looked through the documents first, and Gray almost put the key in to start the ignition but Darby grabbed his hand and told him to listen to this about how Curtis worked for five years for White & Blazevich and then he worked for a client who was engaged in a lawsuit in south Louisiana. The client was Victor Mattiece who Curtis had never met and Mattiece was desperate to win the lawsuit. As Gray put the key in the ignition, Darby added that a partner named Sims Wakefield supervised the case for W & B. Morgan worked on a peripherated case and he took several files and documents that Wakefield left on his desk for him not related to the case. When Morgan got back to his own office, he found a handwritten memo on the bottom of the stack that he had accidentally taken it from Wakefield’s desk and a copy of the memo was attached to the affidavit. He copied the memo and left it under the files on his desk, and Reporter Gray said the next stop was the Washington Herald and started the car but it wasn’t working. Darby told Gray to stop and get out of the car because she knew that was exactly what happened with the same sound right before Thomas’s car blew up when she was talking to him from the street. They got out of the car and started running with Darby holding the evidence, and they couldn’t get through a door because it was locked. The crooked female started shooting at them, and they had to jump to a lower level because the female shooter was getting too close. She saw them hiding in the reflection of a rearview mirror and she was about to shoot them but a Doberman jumped part of the way out of the window and scared the crap out of the female and Darby and Gray ran because they were able to get inside the building through another door and run up the stairs. However, another agent then squealed around the corner in his car and headed straight for them driving like a maniac but he lost control and collided at a high speed another car and both exploded. In the next scene, an employee told Smith that there was a car explosion in the parking garage near the Riggs bank and the rental car involved came back registered to Gray. Smith said he hadn’t heard from Gray since the previous day and added he should never have let Gray continue on that story and the other employee wanted to know what story and Smith told him to find out anything else he could about the incident. Smith was going to make a few calls to figure out what happened with Gray, but then Darby and Gray came walking into his office. Gray introduced his boss Smith Keen to Darby Shaw, and he gave Smith the VHS and paperwork that Morgan had in his lock box. They watched the VHS in the newpaper reporter conference room with many other staff members, and in the video Morgan said this was his affidavit concerning a memo he found on his desk and trusted his wife to do what she would with it if anything happened to him. The memo was from Marty Velmano, a senior partner, and it was dated September 28th addressed to Wakefield and it read, “Sims, advise client research is complete. The bench will sit much softer if the old man is retired. The second retirement is a bit unusual. Jensen, of all people. Advise further that the pelican should arrive here in 4 years assuming other factors.” Morgan went on to say that right afterwards, Justices Rosenberg and Jensen was killed and Morgan firmly believed that it was the work of Mattiece and his associates. The memo didn’t mention Mattiece, but it referred to a client and Wakefield had no other clients, only Mattiece and no client had as much to gain from the new court as Mattiece. Morgan believed he was protecting his family by not telling anyone what he found and he said his wife would only see that video if he was gone so he would have failed and he apologized to his wife. Later on, reporter Gray called Marty and said he was running a story about Marty’s client Mattiece and his involvement in the deaths of the Justices. Marty replied that was great because they would sue Gray’s a** for the next 20 years and he would be named a defendant and Marty bragged about how Mattiece would then own the Washington Herald. Gray asked Marty if he had heard of the Pelican Brief because they had a copy of it as well as a copy of a memo Marty sent to Sims Wakefield in which Marty suggested his client’s position would be greatly improved by the removal of Rosenberg and Jensen from the court. Marty said they waited until after five in the afternoon to call him so they couldn’t do anything in the courts, and Gray told Marty he had no case and he knew it. Marty hung up the phone calling Gray a SOB. With Darby listening on another phone, reporter Gray called Coal and asked him if he read the Pelican Brief, and when he replied that he did Gray explained he was running a story that verified the facts set forth in the Brief. They also confirmed that Mattiece contributed over $4 million to the President’s last campaign, and Coal clarified it was $4,200,000, all through legal channels. Gray went on to say that they believed the White House tried to obstruct the FBI investigation into Mattiece and wanted Coal’s comment. Coal replied that the White House denied any direct or indirect involvement in any aspect of that investigation.Coal told Gray he must have received some bad information and hung up on him. Reporter Gray then called FBI Director Denton Voyles and told him that they were running a story on the murders of Rosenberg and Jensen in the morning and they were naming Mattiece, an oil speculator, and two of his lawyers. They believed the FBI knew about what happened but didn’t investigate at the urging of the White House and asked for Voyles’s comments, Voyles and another agent walked down the hall and went to Smith’s office and closed the door. Coal went into the security room with his personal key and watched a man enter the Oval Office as the President was training his dog and whispered something disturbing into the President’s ear. Gray Grantham and Darby Shaw were then called into the conference room to have a pow-wow with Smith and FBI Voyles. For the record, FBI Voyles had comments so Gray took out his recorder and recorded it. Voyles said he received the Pelican Brief two weeks before and on the same day he submitted it to the White House. It wasn’t considered high priority in the investigation until Gavin Verheek, Special Counsel to the Director, was found murdered in New Orleans. FBI Voyles said off the record, he would discuss if the White House interfered with the investigation of Mattiece so Gray shut the recorder off. Voyles said last Wednesday, the President asked him to ignore Victor Mattiece as a suspect, and in his words he asked Voyles to back off. Voyles had a tape, which he would allow no one to hear, unless the President first denied this, and the FBI Director added that there would be a grand jury by the noon the following day with quick indictments and they would find Mattiece. Voyles then asked for a few minutes alone with Darby, and she said she would be fine with that only if Gray stayed with her. The other two gentlemen left the room, and FBI Voyles asked what was next for Darby and she countered with a question about who killed Khamel. Voyles said off the record, Khamel was killed by a contract operative hired independently by the CIA. He went on to say the Brief scared Giminski more than the rest of them and he probably sent Rupert, the CIA agent, to trail Darby in part to watch her and in part to protect her. Voyles said he could help Darby and asked what she wanted, and she said she wanted to leave the country alone. Voyles said they would get her out of that building and put her on his personal plane and they would fly her anywhere she wanted so she could disappear but she must allow Voyles to contact her through Gray and only if it became urgently necessary. Darby said that was fine and she wanted nobody on the plane but her, Gray and the pilots and after takeoff Darby would instruct the pilot where to go. Voyles replied that pilot had to file a flight plan before he left, and Gray reminded Voyles that since he was the FBI Director he could get around that and the FBI Director made it all happen. They took off in the plane and landed in destination unknown. They got a copy of the Washington Herald front-page story written by Gray and Darby where the assassination plot was exposed and indictments in court killings were expected that day. Darby gave Gray a kiss on the cheek and walked to the cab waiting for her but then came back and gave Gray a big hug for all that he did for her. The next day, reporter Gray got his big break and famous interview on TV about his revealing the plot behind the assassinations of Rosenberg and Jensen. The newscaster told Gray that as of that moment, Victor Mattiece, the richest man in the country, had been indicted along with 4 aides and lawyers. Fletcher Coal, the President’s Chief of Staff, had resigned, and they were getting strong indications the President himself would not run again. They discussed Darby Shaw, the author of the Pelican Brief and wanted to know who she really was, and Gray didn’t want to answer and said that was a question for Darby herself as she was watching from a remote beachfront with a beautiful flower garden on the patio. The newscaster said speaking for the thousands of colleagues including himself who were dying to interview her, where was Darby Shaw. Gray replied that was also a question for Darby Shaw but he knew that she was not available to answer questions until the feeding frenzy stopped. Reporter Gray wouldn’t answer if he knew where Darby was or not, and the broadcaster tried to say that Darby Shaw was a figment of Gray’s imagination and that he created her form a lot of different sources. Just as people believed there was no Deep Throat (Nixon Watergate scandal in 1972), people believed there was no Darby Shaw. Gray said that Darby Shaw was almost too good to be true. This movie had a budget of $45 million budget and grossed over $195 million at the box office.