Paul L. Perito

Paul Louis Perito (January 23, 1937 to March 22, 2020) was a Washington lawyer. A Paul L. Perito is the lawyer named in the April 28, 1987 letter on Barbara Studley's file to the House Iran-Contra committee, and a Paul Perito was a name partner of Laxalt, Washington, Perito & Dubuc in 1991; the records found do not state in so many words that these are the same man.

Government service

He was born in Medford, Massachusetts, graduated from Tufts University in 1960 and from Harvard Law School in 1964. From 1966 to 1970 he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he tried twenty-one cases including United States v. Roy M. Cohn, et al. From 1970 to 1971 he was chief counsel and later staff director of the House Select Committee on Crime, and from 1971 to 1973 chief counsel and deputy director of the White House Special Action Office on Drug Abuse Prevention.¹

The Studley letter, 1987

On April 28, 1987 Frank Koszorus Jr. of the Washington office of Finley, Kumble wrote to Kenneth Ballen, assistant counsel of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran: "During your telephone conference with Paul L. Perito this afternoon, you requested a copy of the memorandum from Barbara F. Studley's file regarding Oliver North."² In the deposition of Daniel O. Graham on May 26, 1987, counsel asked whether Graham had met "her attorney, Mr. Perito," and Graham answered, "The one I know is Perito."³

Washington, Perito & Dubuc and Paul Hastings

The Washington Post reported on December 23, 1987 that Paul Laxalt and Robert B. Washington Jr., partners in the dissolving Finley Kumble, had announced the formation of a Washington-based firm. The bankruptcy court later found that the partnership, Washington, Perito & Dubuc, was organized in January 1988 by thirty-one partners of Finley Kumble's Washington office and others, and ceased practice in August 1991.⁴ On July 20, 1991 the Post reported that Paul Perito, "one of the firm's name partners and head of its important white-collar litigation group," was moving the following Monday with a half-dozen other lawyers to the Washington office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker.⁵

E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr. was described in July 1991 as a partner at Washington, Perito & Dubuc and became a partner of Paul Hastings on July 18, 1994, and Frank Koszorus Jr. signed that firm's registration papers for the Hungarian embassy from March 1993.⁶ Perito's obituary states that he was ultimately a partner and later senior counsel at Paul Hastings, where he was national co-chair of the White Collar Corporate Defense Practice Group and chair of the Litigation Department of the Washington office, and that after leaving private practice he was an officer and director of Star Scientific, Inc., whose mission the obituary gives as reducing toxins in tobacco products. He was president of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association from 2012 to 2014.⁷