ABSTRACT
The battlegrounds were the courthouses of the US, none the site of greater siege than one in lower Manhattan. Few US government buildings are richer in modern drama than the granite and marble Southern District Court on Foley Square. It is the largest federal district courthouse in the country. Many from the biggest investment bankers, corporations and media stars to the noisiest American Communists, conmen and crooks-had entered its hundred-foot-wide columned entrance to meet their makers and unmakers. On the courthouse's broad front steps, more than a hundred television, radio and print reporters waited with their tangle of equipment. And at a side entrance another small gaggle staked out the territory for that one possible picture, or the shouted question that could make the evening news or the next day's paper. The courtroom is a convoluted forum for understanding the real world outside.
