WASHINGTON — Samuel R. Pierce Jr., whose accomplishments as one of the most prominent black lawyers of his generation were overshadowed by corruption and influence-peddling during his tenure as housing secretary in the Reagan administration, died on Tuesday. He was 78.
A former New York law partner, Theodore Kheel, said Pierce failed to recover from a recent stroke and died at a hospital near Washington, D.C., where he had a home.
Although Pierce was never charged with a crime, several of his former aides at the Department of Housing and Urban Development were jailed as a result of a special prosecutor's investigation of wrongdoing and rampant mismanagement at the agency during his eight years as secretary.
A five-year criminal investigation of Pierce ended in 1995 when he issued a statement to prosecutors acknowledging that "my own conduct failed to set the proper standard" at the housing department.
Prosecutors and congressional investigators uncovered extensive evidence to show how Pierce's aides, who said they were acting on his orders, distributed millions of dollars in housing subsidies to prominent Republican consultants at a time when the Reagan administration was slashing the agency's budget. Under President Reagan, annual spending on subsidized housing programs dropped from $26 billion to $8 billion, cuts that Pierce defended.
The subsidy programs that came under scrutiny by prosecutors had been intended to help encourage the construction and rehabilitation of low-income housing.
Among the well-known Republicans who were found to have pressed Pierce for help were James Watt, the former interior secretary, and former Sen. Edward Brooke, R-Mass., who both received large consulting fees for housing projects; and former housing secretary Carla Hills, who received relief from the department for a legal client.
Kheel said that Pierce — a former judge who was the first black partner in a major New York law firm, the first black member of the board of directors of a Fortune 500 company and the only black Cabinet secretary in the Reagan administration — never fully recovered from the scandal.
"The ending was quite tragic for a man who had reached the pinnacle of his profession," Kheel said of the final years of Pierce's life.
Pierce, the only Cabinet secretary to serve all eight years of the Reagan administration, was widely derided within the administration and on Capitol Hill as "Silent Sam" because of his low profile.
He did not develop a close relationship with Reagan, who mistook Pierce for a mayor at a June 1981 reception at the White House. ("Hello, Mr. Mayor," the president said.) The widely reported anecdote clearly embarrassed Pierce and dogged him for the rest of his tenure in the Cabinet.
Aides to Pierce said that he never developed an interest in housing policy and delegated most important decisions to his staff. In the afternoon, they said, he could often be found watching television in his office.
True to character, Pierce mostly refused to defend himself publicly after the favoritism scandal erupted in 1989 with the release of a housing department audit showing how a troubled rent subsidy program had benefited well-connected Republican consultants and former department officials.
He was forced to defend himself in testimony before a House committee in May 1989, four months after he stepped down as housing secretary. While he accepted a share of blame for lax supervision at the agency, he denied any wrongdoing and suggested that former aides were responsible for any abuses.
"Over time, people asked me to get all kinds of benefits," Pierce said at the time. "In eight years, I'll bet you hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people — Republicans and Democrats, governors, mayors, congressmen, senators, developers, contractors and so on — would ask me for something."
Pierce insisted that he instructed his staff to make decisions on housing subsidies on the basis of merit.
It was an ignominious end to a career that, friends once believed, might have ended with Pierce on the Supreme Court. Kheel said that while Pierce had never said so directly to him, it was widely known among Pierce's friends that he remained at the housing agency year after year in the hope that Reagan would nominate him for the court.
From his youth, Samuel Riley Pierce Jr. seemed destined for a life of accomplishment.
Born Sept. 8, 1922, in Glen Cove, N.Y., he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell University, where he was a star halfback. He served in the Army's Criminal Investigation division during World War II, graduated from Cornell Law School and was an assistant district attorney and a United States Attorney in Manhattan.
A lifelong Republican who had once been active in the party's liberal wing, his first tour of Washington came in 1955, when he was named assistant to the secretary of labor in the Eisenhower administration.
He later returned to New York and was appointed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller to judgeships in Manhattan. Running as a Republican, Pierce, who had no talent for the back-slapping normally required of the city's politicians, failed to win his election on his own to the bench in the heavily Democratic borough.
In 1961, he was named a partner in the law firm of Battle, Fowler, Stokes & Kheel. Kheel said that, at the recommendation of Rockefeller, he recruited Pierce after other major firms in New York turned him down for partnerships because of his race.
Although civil rights leaders criticized Pierce during the Reagan administration for failing to advance the cause of minority groups, he repeatedly demonstrated a commitment earlier in his career to helping blacks and other minorities pierce the legal, business and government establishment.
In 1961, he argued before the Supreme Court as part of the legal team that defended Martin Luther King Jr., other black ministers and The New York Times in a landmark court case, New York Times Company vs. Sullivan, that established clear limitations on use of defamation lawsuits. In 1964, he helped found Freedom National Bank, the first predominantly black-managed bank in New York State.
With the election of President Nixon in 1968, Pierce was tapped as general counsel of the Treasury Department, leading a staff of nearly 900 lawyers. In 1973, he returned to private practice and rejoined his old law firm, which had its name changed to include his: Battle, Fowler, Jaffin, Pierce & Kheel.
Kheel recalled that after Reagan's election in 1980, Pierce told friends that he would not accept the position of housing secretary when his name was circulated for the job. But he apparently changed his mind after a personal plea from Reagan during a meeting in California.
"In retrospect, of course, it was a terrible mistake," Kheel said. "Sam was a distinguished lawyer. He was not a distinguished administrator. He did not have any background in housing. He had a background in law." His decision to a accept the job, Kheel said, "was the biggest mistake that Sam Pierce ever made."
Kheel said that Pierce was survived by his wife, Barbara Penn Wright, a physician, and a daughter, Victoria Wright.