He spent most of his law career working in aviation advising in particular Eastern Airlines and Transcontinental Air Transport (forerunner of TWA).
Spater's problems were traced to a meeting with Herbert Kalmbach at the 21 Club in which he was told that anybody contributing $100,000 to CREP would be treated as a "special class."
When a lawsuit by Common Cause revealed the contribution, he was sacked by the American board and Smith returned as interim CEO.
[6][7] Spater lost his law license and his position with American Airlines because of his role in the illegal campaign contributions.
Reviewing the Cobbett biography in the New York Times, William Safire wrote that "Mr. Spater's much-needed new biography of the first media giant is thorough, solid, usefully illustrated and satisfyingly annotated, a scholarly labor of love that adds significantly to the literature about a historic figure too long overlooked by Americans.