Foremost among those conservative friends is Harlan Crow. The son of well-known Dallas real estate executive Trammell Crow, he runs a family holding company that owns 10% of Trammell Crow Co., one of the nation's biggest commercial real estate firms.
A big Republican donor, Crow last summer gave $25,000 to help launch the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign deriding Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry.
In an interview, Crow said he met Thomas 10 years ago at a conference in Dallas where the justice was a speaker. "I was in the audience and I was impressed," Crow said.
Soon afterward, Crow invited Thomas to a family campground in East Texas. Roger Connor, a businessman who was at the camp-out, remembers the all-male gathering.
"They were all smoking cigars. It was a very manly Texas thing," Connor said. He said the participants slept in sleeping bags and tents, and that the activities included a greased pig race.
In 1997, Crow flew Thomas on his personal plane to the San Francisco area and sponsored him as his guest at the Bohemian Grove, a private organization that for more than 125 years has held all-male retreats in the redwoods of Northern California for government and business leaders.
Crow and his wife, Kathy, in 2001 also gave Thomas the Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass. In disclosing the gift in his report for that year, Thomas valued the Bible at $19,000 and listed the Crows as "personal friends."
"I just knew that he was a fan of Frederick Douglass, and I saw that item come available at an auction and I bought it and gave it to him," Crow said.
Crow donated $175,000 for a new Clarence Thomas wing at the justice's childhood library in Pin Point, Ga.
At the time, Crow was a national board member of the Center for the Community Interest, an advocacy group that filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court espousing conservative views on cases involving such issues as crime and pornography. Crow said he was not deeply involved with the group, which is now defunct.
Gillers, the NYU professor, questioned whether Thomas should have accepted anything from Crow.
The federal rules say a judge "shall not accept a gift from anyone who is seeking official action from or doing business with the court," Gillers noted.
"If Harlan Crow is a member of the board of a group that files amicus briefs with the court, then I think he comes within that provision," Gillers said.
