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that before. I tried to shake hands with Mr. Koch. You'll never believe it: the man refused to shake hands with me.” It became even bigger.
And then when it came my turn I said, “I'm a lawyer. My reputation for integrity is my most prized possession. Nobody can call me a crook and shake my hand after he does that -- nobody.”
I must tell you the response to that. The overwhelming response was that this was a silly thing for me to do: it was childish, petulant. A very small number said, “Oh, gee, wonderful. We're so glad that you did that.” In retrospect I'm not sorry I did it and it was very genuine emotion on my part, I would do it differently today -- I would do a lot of things differently today than I did then; in fact, I do things differently today than I did then. I would probably shake his hand but say something which would be quite cutting. I'm not going to postulate what I would say, but it would be in the area of saying, “We can shake hands, but that means nothing. What you did was a goddamned outrage.” Something along those lines is what I would do. Of course, it wouldn't have any newspaper flair to it, but that's not why I did what I did initially. It was just overwhelming outrage. I think we have to stop.
Let me just ask you a couple of quick questions. You mentioned Jim Leff as being a good appointee. Do you think that Carmine DeSapio generally put good people in these offices?
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