BEHIND BARS WITH BRENNAN
By GREG SAITZ
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
An older inmate enters a long visiting room at the Fort Dix federal prison.
It is sunny outside, but a cold winter wind is blowing. He has a gray scarf wrapped several times around his neck, perhaps to compensate for his thin orange windbreaker. The inmate removes both, revealing a 61-year-old man, tall and slim with thinning silver hair. He walks with a slight hitch.
"Bob Brennan," he says, extending his hand.
His introduction doesn't mention the plainly obvious part of his current identity: federal prisoner.
"I'm not sitting here an embittered guy angry at the world," says one of New Jersey's most notorious figures. "I'm not happy I'm here. This is devastating after having accomplished what I have in my life. But I'm not moping over it."
During a series of phone conversations, letters and an interview at Fort Dix — just his second in five years — Brennan reveals himself to be mostly the same persuasive, mysterious, intense and mischievous person he was while making tens of millions of dollars, only to be forced to relinquish it to his creditors.
He also remains defiant.
Brennan admits securities regulators — his mortal enemies for much of the '80s and '90s — raised some valid concerns about how he operated his stock-brokerage firm, First Jersey Securities. But he refuses to accept responsibility for crimes he says he didn't commit and still zealously tries to convince others he was jailed on false testimony. He also maintains his brokerage firm was not the "massive and continuing fraud" a federal judge ruled, and that his actions have been distorted by the government and media.
In other words, don't expect a great unburdening.
So for now Brennan shares a two-man prison cell at "The Fort," crafting elaborate, handmade holiday cards, reminiscing in letters about meetings with presidents and rationing his monthly allotment of four rolls of toilet paper.
Fort Dix federal correctional institution is a sprawling complex on the property of a military base in South Jersey. It is a low-security prison, where many of the 4,500 inmates live in 12-man dorm rooms with bunk beds.
Brennan, however, has just one "bunkie" in a small cell he says he was moved to a couple of years ago, after a heart attack. He describes the grayish walls and concrete floor as bare. There are two single beds, two steel lockers, a steel folding chair and a table.
His current home is about 30 miles from his former mansion in Brielle, with its tennis court, indoor basketball court and view of the Manasquan River. When he looks out his window, Brennan says, he sees rows of coiled razor wire. Guards with flashlights enter the cell every few hours during the night to count two bodies.
He says he rises about 6 a.m. and generally avoids breakfast at the mess hall, opting for generic raisin bran he buys from the commissary. For other meals, he eats packages of mackerel or tuna he also gets from the commissary.
His clothes are prison khakis, freshly pressed. His shirts, once monogrammed with "REB," now have chest patches bearing his name and inmate number.
He wears a wispy, faded gold chain around his neck, barely visible beneath his prison uniform and long-sleeve T-shirt. Hanging from the chain is a Miraculous Medal, a religious medallion his parents gave him for his First Communion. He says he has worn the ornament every day since.
"It hasn't performed any miracles," he says, half-seriously.
Brennan works as a prison orderly, which to some extent involves janitorial work but more recently has had him doing clerical duties for the prison staff. He spends about six or seven hours a day at his job, five days a week.
He earns $5.25 a month. At that rate, he would have to work 4,563 years to make what he averaged in just one month in the 1980s ($287,500) while running First Jersey.
Entering such a spartan existence wasn't easy after 25 years of personal staff, helicopters, limousines, stays at the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferrat in the south of France and globe-hopping vacations. But after growing up in Newark's North Ward the sixth of nine children and having little in the way of excess, he says he is handling prison life just fine.
"A huge percentage of the population around here complains about everything. And maybe there's even justification to it. But what's the sense of complaining about it?" he says. "It doesn't do any good, so you've got to accept it and move on. That's pretty much been my mind-set throughout my life anyway, but it has to be a discipline I practice here.
"And the truth is, hey, it isn't so bad. So you wear cotton brown clothes. It's better than I had when I was a kid."
For exercise, Brennan says he walks six to 10 miles a day around the prison compound, five or six days a week. In the past year or so, he says, he has been playing basketball with the other inmates. Most of them are in their 20s or early 30s.
"That's always an adventure," he says. "Today, it's a victory if I get back into my room in one piece."
Many of the other inmates call him "Mr. Brennan." Some of the newer arrivals refer to him as "Pop."
"I really try to get along with every faction here because it's a unique type of society," Brennan said during a recent phone interview. "But there's really nobody that you get close to. People are constantly rotating here. Prison is not a place that you go to make friends. I live that part of my life still either in my imagination or through the visiting room."
Once or twice a week, Brennan treks to that room to catch up with friends or family. He sees his sister, Sheila, two of his sons and four of his grandchildren. The Rev. Edwin Leahy and Abbot Melvin Valvano from St. Benedict's Preparatory School — Brennan's alma mater and recipient of his largess — are among the friends who regularly make the drive to the prison.
The visiting room itself is in classic institutional style.
Soda machines sit at one end and red plastic chairs are hooked together in long rows. For pictures, prisoners and guests can stand in front of a wall-size photograph, about 15 feet wide, showing a garden pergola overlooking a rocky coastline.
Each visit ends for Brennan, as for every inmate, the same way: with a strip search.
As for phone privileges, Brennan gets 300 minutes a month; no conversation can last longer than 15 minutes.
"He's pretty much the same type of person before he went in, but I can't imagine it's not taking a toll on him physically and emotionally," says Ronald Riccio, a Seton Hall Law School professor who became friends with Brennan after representing him in the late 1970s.
CHECKING OFF THE WEEKS
Brennan, who turns 62 tomorrow, is in more precarious health than most of Fort Dix's inmates. He has had the heart attack, undergone surgery for skin cancer and has other concerns. Before going in, the one-time avid runner says, he went into cardiac arrest twice.
"I'm very conscious . . . of having a diet and exercise program that conforms to trying to walk out of here on my feet and not in a pine box," Brennan says.
Or, as Riccio says, "I think he's just hoping to make it out alive."
Brennan says he keeps track of time on a simple calendar in his room. Every Friday, he checks off another week.
Aside from working his clerical job, Brennan watches some TV — he enjoys "Survivor" — and reads quite widely, keeping up with the newspapers and financial magazines that once frequently featured him.
He reads biographies of such men as Ronald Reagan — a one-time political friend — Ben Franklin and John Adams. He says he liked "Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons." It was "the first flattering portrayal of the king of the robber barons — only took 100 years."
Brennan takes some time each day of the year to work on individualized Christmas cards for friends that double as ornaments. Each one takes him six to eight hours to complete, using posterboard, colored pencils, floor wax (for glossy highlights) and color copies of his smiling mug.
When he isn't reading, Brennan is writing. He corresponds with about 200 people, ranging from his sister and sons to his friend Bill Parcells, coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
After agreeing to be interviewed for this story, Brennan threw himself into the process with gusto. He responded to questions with more than 80 pages of handwritten answers, most on yellow legal paper.
He created a tabbed folder with copies of letters to friends and family. He also sent copies of articles about him, nearly 100 pages of memos and typed letters to friends, a copy of his favorite poem, "If" by Rudyard Kipling, First Jersey marketing material and a transcript of a speech he gave 25 years ago that a financial newsletter printed.
Brennan's stationery is self-made, using modified cartoons from the New Yorker and other publications. At the top of one page, Brennan pasted a cutout of his smiling face onto a cartoon of a man behind a desk. The nameplate on the desk reads, "Still here." At the bottom of the page is a cartoon of an inmate reading the Escapes section of the New York Times (which didn't go over well with the prison guard who monitors inmate mail).
Brennan uses his letters to reminisce about days gone by, days that often were filled with the luxuries only serious cash can bring. It was 21 years ago when Brennan flew to Washington, D.C., in his private Gulfstream jet to meet with Reagan and other top politicos on the eve of Reagan´s second term as president.
He says Reagan wound up inviting him to a private swearing-in ceremony at the White House, which Brennan suspects came be cause of his firm´s sponsorship of one of the inaugural balls. Some of the other guests included Bren nan´s favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra and Mr. T.
He describes it as "one of the most pleasurable afternoons of my life."
THE THRILL OF POWER
Sheila Brennan, five years younger than her brother, says she doesn´t remember much about him when she was growing up in Newark because he was so busy she hardly ever saw him. That kind of schedule continued during his career.
She used to keep a written list of topics to talk to him about when he called because his conversations were so fast. Since being imprisoned, however, "he´s mellowed," she says.
"He really doesn´t have any choice but to relax."
Relax. And contemplate the past 30 years.
Should he have testified at his criminal trial? In hindsight, it was a horrible mistake not to have, he says.
Should he have named his racehorses in mocking tribute to his adversaries? (Ira Lee Sorkin, onetime head of the SEC´s New York office, inspired Brennan to call a thoroughbred Sara Lee Dork.) Perhaps that was a bit immature.
"I believe I was a very complex person. A little less so today, but ... I don´t think there´s any doubt that the success I enjoyed .¤.¤. really intoxicated me a little bit with the power that went along with it and contributed to sometimes being ar rogant, sometimes feeling infallible and making mistakes as a result of it," he says.
"But I also sincerely believe, even with the five years of reflec tion, that the vast majority of things I did, decisions I made and sacrifices that I made, were good. Whether it be for my family, my friends, my customers, my community, whatever."
Complex. Complicated. Those are words Riccio also uses to describe his friend. "There are sides to Bob that probably he´s the only person aware of," Riccio says.
How about confrontational and manipulative?
Brennan owns up to those terms, too.
"He is rude," says his sister, the youngest of the Brennan siblings. "He had a personality like Martha Stewart, and Martha Stewart went to prison because of her personality and my brother went to prison be cause of his personality. That´s why he´s sitting where he is. His personality is: ´I´m not doing anything wrong. Come and get me.´"
But Brennan, ever the salesman, also wants credit for what he says are his other traits: generosity, compassion and honesty.
THE 2011 SHOWER
Brennan still seems somewhat shocked by the length of his prison term, 12 years and two months in all. The bureau of prisons lists his projected release date as Dec. 26, 2011 — nearly six more years of checking off Fridays.
Most of his appeals have been exhausted. His conviction on seven of 13 counts and a nine-year, two-month sentence in the bankruptcy case have been upheld. A year ago, though, an appeals court ordered Brennan resentenced on the contempt charge that added three years to his original prison term.
The win ultimately turned out to be academic. After consulting with friends and his court-appointed attorney, Brennan withdrew his challenge. He was afraid U.S. District Judge Richard Owen — the judge who ordered the $75 million civil judgment against him and First Jersey — would impose an even harsher sentence the second time around.
Although he says he doesn't think much about what he will do when he is released, he has some ideas: Spend time with his grandchildren. Maybe move to the Jupiter, Fla., area, where he used to have a home. Try to rebuild a life with absolutely nothing to his name.
Brennan dismisses the notion he has cash concealed in places around the world.
"When I say nothing, I mean nothing," he writes in one letter. "I tease my friends that they'll finally be able to find that elusive gift for their friend who they always complained had everything. Maybe they'll throw me a shower."
TOUCHING UP THE PORTRAIT
Brennan is aware that many people believe he is exactly where he belongs. Securities regulators, investors, those who prosecuted him or pursued civil cases against him, those who investigated him through the bankruptcy case — they believe they know all they need to about Robert Brennan.
"He always felt he could charm anyone out of anything," says Jeffrey Herrmann, a Saddle Brook attorney who represented investors in a class-action case that resulted in a $55 million settlement with Brennan's bankruptcy estate. "I found him always personable, charming and a delight. And I would never have bought a used car from him."
Still, Brennan hopes the interviews, letters and access will help paint a more complete picture of him. Perhaps it will affect people who have formed conclusions about him based solely on what they read.
In a final letter, Brennan doctors a photo of himself and a friend, taping his face over his friend's so a casual observer might believe Brennan is fat. The letter also includes a sketch of an angel that has Brennan's head attached — with two devil horns growing out of it.
His impish way of illustrating is meant to suggest how perception can be manipulated to create an alternate reality. This, of course, leads to the question: Has Brennan created just that for himself?
When asked again, he acknowledges relatively minor lapses in decorum — acting like a jerk at times, letting his ego go unchecked. But the really big stuff — charges of purposefully creating a system that separated thousands of investors from their money, trying to exploit the bankruptcy process — either never happened, was misinterpreted or simply was the fault of someone else.
A tarnished angel with barely a stub of horns? Or a delusional fraud who somehow still refuses to see what is plain to others?
The good Brennan and the bad Brennan melded together, serving hard time at The Fort.