12/19/11
The Collector: Did a Famed Historian Commit an Audacious Crime? Eliza Gray
On a warm Saturday in early July, an
employee at the Maryland Historical Society placed a call to the police. He had
noticed two visitors behaving strangely—a young, tall, handsome man with high
cheekbones and full lips and a much older, heavier man, with dark, lank hair and
a patchy, graying beard. The older man had called in advance to give the
librarians a list of boxes of documents he wanted to see, saying that he was
researching a book. At some point during their visit, the employee saw the
younger man slip a document into a folder. When the police arrived, they found
79 documents in a laptop bag and took the two men into custody.The younger man was Jason Savedoff, a 24-year-old Canadian-American dual citizen and aspiring model who had attended McGill University. But it was the older man whose identity quickly attracted national attention. He was a 63-year-old presidential historian named Barry Landau, who for many years had moved in the most rarefied circles of American life.
According to Landau’s website, he had “served nine Presidents and worked with every White House since Lyndon Johnson’s.” A search for his name in news accounts finds him appearing, Zelig-like, alongside numerous political luminaries: shopping in Georgetown with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, planning a luncheon for Lady Bird Johnson, accompanying Richard Nixon to the Soviet Union, dancing with Betty Ford (and getting cut in on by Fred Astaire), accompanying President Jimmy Carter on the day that he kissed Queen Elizabeth on the lips, escorting Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker to the 1997 Clinton inaugural parade. There are photos of him with Nixon, the Fords, the Reagans, with George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, and with every member of the Clinton family individually. His 2007 book, The President’s Table: Two Hundred Years of Dining and Diplomacy, received a glowing blurb from Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—“Landau weaves these previously missing links of Presidential history into a fascinating tapestry and narrative of Presidential lore”—and, in the acknowledgments, the author thanks Diane Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey, and Mike Wallace for their encouragement.
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