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Anybody remember Sandy Lewis?

That Mr. Lewis is in a rage is not unusual. A few days earlier, he had watched as the computerized stock trading of Knight Capital ran amok.

"If Knight blows, six firms follow, and the whole corrupt thing goes up," he said. "Predator banks and hedge funds run the market for their pleasure -- there's no rational structure, nothing!"

Thus starts a pretty remarkable profile of an old Wall Street legend who fought corruption back in the 70's and 80's, only be be brought down by none other than NYC Mayor Rudy Giulliani when he was the NY District Attorney.

Sandy is still kicking and screaming from his farm in upstate New York, that's for sure!

"The complicity on Wall Street is sickness!" Mr. Lewis says. He fixes you with his laser stare. "If you think the big firms are being honest" -- his tone slides streetwise -- "well, sweetheart, go think something else!"

And who is Sandy Lewis?

The temptation is to dismiss Mr. Lewis, 73, as a crank, except he once ruled as an eccentric genius of arbitrage, with a preternatural feel for the tectonic movements of the markets. He has railed for decades about venalities now on daily display. Rude truth is his currency.

He knows Wall Street's heights. He helped hire Michael R. Bloomberg, and he invested the money of two former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen, making a fortune in the 1980s. And he knows its depths, since he pleaded guilty to stock manipulation in 1989, and was barred from the Street.

President Bill Clinton pardoned him, and a federal court judge later said Mr. Lewis acted out of pure reforming impulse.

But he remains in self-imposed exile.

Read on to take in the whole story, especially this part:

Tell us about Bill Clinton. Mr. Lewis cannot resist a smile; even by his standards, this is a weird tale.

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Lewis -- in exile -- got a phone call at his Maine home from his friend, Douglas S. Eakeley. Mr. Eakeley was also an old friend of Mr. Clinton's.

I want you to go to a fund-raiser in Portland, Mr. Eakeley said, and talk with the president about his womanizing.

Is this, Mr. Lewis asked, an intervention?

As it happens, Mr. Lewis possesses a sixth sense for psychic pain. He can pick the addicted, the sick and the depressed out of a crowd. His fractured childhood and pathological candor give him an expert hand with the singed.

He rounded up Barbara and a friend, Dr. Stanley Evans, and drove to see Mr. Clinton at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

Mr. Lewis introduced himself. "You're Doug's friend?" the president said, according to Mr. Lewis and Dr. Evans. "Wait, we'll talk."

The Secret Service escorted Mr. Lewis, his wife and the doctor into the kitchen, and the president followed.

"Sir," Mr. Lewis recalled saying as he stared at Mr. Clinton. "Doug thought maybe I should spend a weekend with you. It would be the two of us only."

Mr. Lewis said the president was taken aback. "What is this about?"

"Sir," Mr. Lewis said, "this is about your most personal business. You probably won't be too happy with me by Monday morning, but I think we can avoid a train wreck."

The president's face flushed. Dr. Evans realized his friend was confronting the president about his extramarital affairs. "I thought Sandy had lost his mind," he said.

The weekend session never took place. Revelations of the president's sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky came years later.

Mr. Eakeley is circumspect. "Sandy has incredible intuition and intellect, and I knew he could help if the president could stand it," he said. "Sandy may have alarmed the president, but I don't think he repelled him."

Mr. Clinton's office declined to comment.

This could very well be the only time Sandy hasn't repelled someone with whom he's interacted. He sounds like a veritable Larry David from "Curb Your Enthusiasm!"

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