On october 28,1925, a young legal aide reported to a ramshackle warehouse at the foot of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. He placed a stack of legal volumes on a scarred wooden table, then waited for the court-martial of Army Air Service Colonel William "Billy" Mitchell to begin. William H. Webb was fresh out of law school when chief counsel Frank Reid asked him to join the defense team. Barely mentioned in the hundreds of newspaper accounts of the trial, Webb nonetheless impressed a reporter at the Baltimore Evening Sun, who wrote: "[This] wizard of legal research...cannot be seen as he sits hunched behind a big pillar in the courtroom, and as he seldom even whispers, hisrnpresence is unnoticed by spectators; and yet, besides Representative Reid, chief counsel, he is probably the most important personage among the Mitchell warriors at the court-martial.... He is the pivot of the defense, and it was his nimble fingers that thumbed the thick legal volumes that Reid quotes so glibly."
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机译：1925年10月28日，一位年轻的法律助手向华盛顿特区国会大厦大楼脚下的摇摇欲坠的仓库报告。他将一堆法律书籍放在一块伤痕累累的木桌上，然后等待美国陆军航空兵的军事法庭审判。威廉“比利”米切尔上校开始。首席顾问弗兰克·里德（Frank Reid）要求威廉姆·韦伯（William H. Webb）刚从法学院毕业时，他就加入了国防部。韦伯（Webb）在审判的数百个报纸报道中几乎没有提及，但在巴尔的摩夜报（Baltimore Evening Sun）上给记者留下了深刻印象。在法庭上，甚至很少窃窃私语，观众并不注意到他的存在；但是，除了首席顾问里德代表外，他可能是军事法庭上米切尔战士中最重要的人物。辩护，正是他灵活的手指使里德如此轻描淡写地引用了厚厚的法律书。”
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