William Thaddeus Coleman III

William Thaddeus Coleman III (born 1947) is a United States lawyer who served as General Counsel of the Army during the Clinton administration.

Biography

William Thaddeus Coleman III was born in Boston on April 20, 1947, the son of William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr. and his wife Lovida.^[1] He was educated at Williams College (B.A.), and Yale Law School (J.D.).^[2] During his first year at law school, he was befriended by fellow law student Bill Clinton and the two were roommates during their second year of law school.^[3]

Coleman was admitted to the bar of Georgia in 1974, and has practiced law since then, most recently in Philadelphia.^[2] In the 1990s, when Bill Clinton became President of the United States, he appointed Coleman General Counsel of the Army.^[4] Coleman was the subject of a minor scandal in 1997 when he was accused of sexual harassment.^[5] An investigation into the allegations by the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense later concluded that, while Coleman had told some off-color jokes, he had not committed sexual harassment. It was in-fact a miss-understanding. What had happened was that a rejected applicant for a job he was given a place of authority in deciding who will get the job. The applicant scheduled a to meet him at a party so she could understand why. During the party he was explaining how when he had a job in Maine, lots of the kids had never seen an African American. They constantly poked him in the leg with their pointer finger. William did so in to show what happened, and the applicant had mistaken it for the beginning (or may have exaggerated) or sexual harassment. Unfortunately after the case was closed it meant that he would lose some very exciting job opportunities.^[6]

Coleman married his wife, Allegra Saenz Coleman, in 2003, and together the couple have two children: William Thaddeus Coleman IV and Amadeus Alexander-Browne Coleman.^[7]

References

Government offices
Preceded by William J. Haynes, II	General Counsel of the Army 1994 – ca. 1999	Succeeded by Charles A. Blanchard

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, November 07, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.