A Profile Of Lewinsky's Team
Monica Lewinsky's two attorneys quickly gained a victory for their client, who was granted blanket immunity in the investigation of President Clinton on Tuesday.
Click here for an explanation of immunity by CBS News Legal Correspondent Kristin Jeannette-Meyers.
Plato Cacheris and Jacob Stein were hired in early June to take over the former White House intern's defense from her former lawyer, William Ginsburg.
The lawyers are known for their ace representation in Washington scandals and have a history dating back to Watergate, when they represented high-level spies and low-level government workers.
Cacheris and Stein share a reputation as crackerjack criminal lawyers who nearly always settle their cases without going to trial.
"These are not the guys you hire if you want to fight the case," said Washington lawyer Mark Hulkower, who as a federal prosecutor headed the spy case against Aldrich Ames when Cacheris negotiated a guilty plea and life prison term. Ames had faced a possible death penalty.
Stein, 75, is a reserved, bookish lawyer who jogs, juggles, and reveres Winston Churchill.
He is on the record as saying he does not vote. He is also on record as saying independent counsels should stick to the facts they are hired to investigate and not stray down new or unrelated legal alleys.
As the independent counsel who investigated Reagan White House adviser Edwin Meese in 1984, Stein rejected opportunities to expand it.
"He has a reputation for being the independent counsel who did it right: Get in, get out," said Washington defense lawyer John Nields Jr., a former special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages case.
Stein represented former Sen. Bob Packwood during a Senate inquiry into his sexual conduct. He also is known for quietly winning an acquittal for a relatively minor Watergate figure, lawyer Kenneth Parkinson, in the 1974 cover-up trial that sent much bigger names to prison.
Cacheris, 69, is less reserved than his new colleague - given to bold suits and bold language.
Arguing for leniency in 1996 for a former national treasurer of the Episcopal Church who admitted embezzling $1.5 million, Cacheris said the woman suffered from "haughty, high-flying, and reckless hypomania."
His other high-profile clients included former Attorney General John Mitchell during Watergate and convicted spy Harold J. Nicholson. Cacheris also won immunity for Fawn Hall, Oliver North's secretary, during an independent counsel investigation of Iran-Contra.
More recently, Cacheris has represented Mark A. Siegel, a longtime Democratic activist enmeshed in the congressional investigation into possible fund-raising abuses in the 1996 elections.
Observers of the case had targeted Ginsburg's inability to get Lewinsky an immunity deal as the primary reason for his dismissal. Ginsburg, a California medical malpractice attorney, contered media reports that he had been fired from his post. He said that he had in fact encouraged Lewinsky to seek other counsel.
"When I realized my strategy had hit a wall, I had to step aside and suggest to my client that she seek new and different counsel," Ginsburg said in June.
Ginsburg himself had replaced Francis D. Carter, Lewinsky's first lawyer. Carter was recruited by Vernon Jordan Jr., a friend of Mr. Clinton. Carter was originally brought on to aid Lewinsky as her affidavit in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case was being drafted.
Carter had worked for Lewinsky for one month and was replaced in January. The Washington lawyer said that Lewinsky withheld key information from him while he represented her - such as the gifts she allegedly received from Mr. Clinton, and her meetings with former White House staffer Linda Tripp, whose secret recordings of their conversations sparked the investigation. Carter has also said that he was dismissed without explanation.