From the State Journal Register

Ryan pins hopes on tough lawyer from Bushnell

By MIKE ROBINSON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
3/21/05
CHICAGO - Facing racketeering charges that could send him to prison for years, former Gov. George Ryan is pinning his future on a onetime Illinois farm boy who dreamed of becoming a lawyer as he watched Perry Mason's exploits on television.
Dan K. Webb once baled hay on his grandfather's farm near Bushnell, but these days he's one of the legal world's biggest guns, defending corporations and politicians in trouble with the feds and untangling the messy divorces of the high and the mighty.
"He's an 'aw, shucks' guy from Bushnell, Illinois, but in a courtroom he's deadly," chortles former Gov. James R. Thompson, who runs Chicago's Winston & Strawn law firm.
General Electric, Microsoft and Philip Morris all have sought out the firm to pay Webb's $700-an-hour fee to fight off U.S. Justice Department lawsuits.
In 2003, Webb represented retired G.E. chairman Jack Welch in his high-stakes divorce settlement, then was retained by the New York Stock Exchange to investigate former chairman Richard Grasso's $187.5 million compensation. William Kennedy Smith hired him to fight a civil lawsuit accusing the Kennedy cousin of sexual assault, and Webb got the case thrown out in 2004.
Philip Morris has Webb in Washington fighting the government over allegations that big tobacco companies defrauded U.S. smokers, a case in which billions of dollars are at stake.
The tobacco trial, expected to last months, gave Ryan a scare when U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer in Chicago got tired of waiting and threatened to start Ryan's trial this week as scheduled - without Webb. The former governor himself scurried to federal court to plead for a delay until September, when the tobacco trial is expected to be over. The judge agreed.
"Dan Webb is irreplaceable," Ryan said.
In the late '80s and early '90s, Webb was the special prosecutor who won a conviction against Admiral John Poindexter on charges linked to the Iran-Contra Affair. He became famous - or notorious, depending on point of view - for his hard-nosed, three-hour grilling of former President Ronald Reagan when he was called as a witness.
Webb didn't flinch, even though he is a Republican who voted for Reagan twice.
"Iran-Contra was a blip on an otherwise great presidency," he says.
Webb always has been a good talker.
With three years of college under his belt but no degree, he talked a dean into allowing him to enroll in Loyola University law school in Chicago.
"It was my first oral argument," Webb says. "I think he could see I had fire in my belly."
Out of college, he became an assistant U.S. attorney and later U.S. attorney in Chicago, putting away corrupt state lawmakers, crooked judges and police caught taking payoffs.
It was in the U.S. attorney's office that he met Thompson, who would be instrumental in convincing U.S. Sen. Charles H. Percy to propose Webb to Reagan for U.S. attorney.
Like any other lawyer, Webb has taken his lumps.
He got hammered with a towering $160 billion judgment against Philip Morris in a smoking suit in a Florida court three years ago. He points out that the cigarette maker already had lost the liability phase when he was brought in for the penalty phase. And the verdict was later reversed on appeal.
But he also has scored some stunning successes, including victories over the Justice Department in antitrust suits against General Electric and Microsoft.
Washington attorney Brendan Sullivan, who has squared off against Webb in court five times in the last two decades, says part of that success is Webb's ability to fit his arguments to the evidence and part is just getting juries to like him.
"I don't think any prosecutor likes to look over at the defense table and see Dan Webb sitting there," Sullivan says.
Edward M. Genson, a legendary Chicago criminal defense attorney, describes Webb as "a well prepared lawyer, very fast on his feet, glib and with a nice jury persona."
Ryan is counting on that.
The crusty, 70-year-old Republican saw his hopes for a second term as governor crumble under a federal corruption investigation that already has sent dozens of former state employees and others to prison.
A 22-count indictment alleges Ryan accepted free vacations in Jamaica and Palm Springs and other goodies while doling out favors, such as lucrative state contracts and leases to lobbyist friends, starting in 1990 when he was elected secretary of state.
"He didn't do what the government says he did and we're going to prove in court that he didn't do those things," Webb declares.
Webb was born a mailman's son. His sister, Diane Hoyle, who still lives in Bushnell, says it was watching Perry Mason that inspired him to become a lawyer. The competitive edge always has been there, she says, from winning at cards to winning in court.
"He'd get real upset when he didn't (win), but he most generally did because he was smart," Hoyle says.