THE CHEERFUL GIVER

Happy is the man who rules his market, especially one as lucrative as Vance Opperman's. As president of West Publishing, the quasi-official publisher of court decisions, he has earned a fortune. And so when his empire was threatened in 1994 by potential competition from, of all places, the Justice Department, he called in a little help from his friends in Washington.

Fortunately for him, he had a lot of those. A major Democratic Party fund raiser, who with his father gave $195,000 in 1992-94, Opperman enjoyed a decades-old friendship with Al Gore and served as campaign-finance co-chairman for California Senator Dianne Feinstein in 1994. At a Democratic fund raiser that fall, Opperman took the opportunity to collar Bill Clinton and, as Democratic officials told TIME, asked him point-blank, "Can you get the Justice Department off my back?" Opperman recalls seeing Clinton but denies asking for a favor. He remembers how agitated he was at the time over an announcement by the Justice Department that it was exploring ways to help consumers gain cheaper online access to court opinions--a form of legal research that posed a threat to West's $800 million-a-year business.

Clinton didn't know the details but told Opperman he would have his counselor Mack McLarty look into it. McLarty, who had had business dealings with Opperman, met with him and White House lawyer Steve Neuwirth in his West Wing office. The object, says White House special counsel Lanny Davis, was to "determine what if any response the White House might have" to Opperman's concern. At McLarty's direction, Neuwirth made inquiries at Justice, and learned of a complicating issue. The department's Antitrust Division was investigating the online service industry West dominated for alleged monopolistic practices. The White House quickly bowed out.

After years of cultivating politicians and federal judges--West regularly flew members of the judiciary to posh retreats--Opperman had other chits to call in. Judges, Congressmen and thousands of West employees sent letters and made calls to Justice to plead Opperman's case. In February the department formally abandoned any online plans that would have undercut his company. Justice officials said cost and complexity, not political influence, determined the outcome. West soon thereafter won a $14.2 million contract to provide Justice with online legal research. Not only that, but the department's antitrust investigation never seemed to get off the ground.