The bizarre confession came as WABC Radio's Richard Bey interviewed Peter Simon about his new book "I and Eye: Pictures of My Generation," about how the 1960s changed American culture.

Dershowitz, apparently a friend of Simon, phoned in to talk about the book.

DERSHOWITZ: You know, when I started teaching at Harvard Law School in 1964 it was a crime for anybody to fornicate; that is, to have sex with somebody with whom you were not married. That was a crime in Massachusetts. Even the extreme right, with a few exceptions, have accepted the notion that sex is not the government's business.

BEY: Except that now fornication has become a form of entertainment.

SIMON: Alan, let's bring it back home. You and I both go to this wonderful nude beach on Martha's Vineyard. That never would have happened without the 60s.

BEY: Alan, I've got to tell you something - with the listening audience here at ABC, they are now screaming and pulling their hair out at the thought of Alan Dershowitz running on the beach nude.

DERSHOWITZ: (laughing nervously) Ah, I've been - nobody is required to imagine that phenomenon.

BEY: Thank you.

SIMON: Don't you think, Alan, that the popularization of that sort of intimacy in a kind of a public way was an effect of the 60s?

DERSHOWITZ: No, I don't, actually. Cause I think, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt used to run naked on that nude beach....

SIMON: But it wasn't a movement?

BEY: That's another thing I'd rather not ponder.

DERSHOWITZ: I don't see that as a movement. I see that as just a personal - you know, people - there are a lot of beaches. There's a lot of privacy. People do what they want. Skinny-dipping is as popular among conservatives as it is among liberals. (End of Excerpt)

In other comments, the renowned Harvard lawyer contended that Bill Clinton would have been a great president if the 9/11 attacks had happened on his watch.

"Peter and I both know Bill Clinton," Dershowitz told WABC. "And I know him as somebody who sometimes is incredibly focused.

"For example I think, God forbid, if Sept. 11 had occured two years earlier, you would have seen a president so focused on doing what had to be done it would have raised him to the most incredible heights of leadership."

Dershowitz called Clinton "either fortunate or unfortunate to preside over eight years of relative peace and prosperity.... it was a relatively boring time. He never had a chance to rise to the occasion."

The renowned law professor did not say whether Clinton, who spent several vacations on Martha's Vineyard as president, ever turned up at his favorite nude beach.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:



DNC



A product that might interest you:

Shocking Details of Bill and Hillary`s "Final Days"

