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Former U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey had only one comment about a documentary on his life, airing on Sunday (July 5) at 6:30 p.m. on KQED-TV, which he hasn't yet seen.

"Well, you know, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," he jokingly told the Weekly Thursday.

The hour-long film, "Pete McCloskey, Leading from the Front," portrays the 15-year Republican congressman as a bare-knuckles fighter for the causes in which he believes.

Decorated war veteran, challenger of former President Richard Nixon, environmentalist and early supporter of a Palestinian state, McCloskey is still a force to be reckoned with: He took on Republican incumbent Richard Pombo of Tracy in 2006 at age 78 after Pombo systematically attempted to dismantle the Endangered Species Act, which McCloskey co-authored and regards as one of his finest pieces of work, he said.

Still active in political causes, last year he helped get a revised G.I. bill signed that will allow veterans to attend colleges such as Stanford University. Now he's trying to get lobbyists out of Congress, believing that "big money" is the root of the problem in Washington.

Still, one can't blame him if at 81 he occasionally slows a bit.

"I can hardly lift a bale of hay anymore, but I can still shovel the horse manure on my orange trees," he said.

Horse manure -- the verbal form -- is one of the things McCloskey refused to take from people as an attorney and in Congress, often stirring up controversy to make people think about issues. He didn't like extremists and didn't tolerate one-sided views, said Rob Caughlan, producer and director of the film.

Sometimes McCloskey said things that upset people. It nearly cost him re-election twice. He alienated his Jewish constituency with his belief that Congress had one-sided support of Israel, and he angered fellow Republicans even more with his opposition to the Vietnam War and repudiation of the sitting Republican president, Nixon.

McCloskey was "a heat-seeking missile for people's hot buttons," said Caughlan, who first met the congressman in 1967 as a precinct walker for his first congressional campaign.

McCloskey's willingness to take controversial stands, even against his own political party, is what attracted Caughlan to the idea of producing a film about his life.

"KQED wanted to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with a program about a real patriot. The show is what real patriotism is about: a man who had a 50-year career of courage and integrity of public service that wasn't about himself," said Caughlan, who was his press secretary during McCloskey's challenge of Pombo.

McCloskey, however, sees himself in a humbler light.

"The keynote of all of this is the luck. I had the good fortune of being a lawyer in Palo Alto when the environmental movement was getting started. I'm just a creature of it. I just did what a lot of Palo Alto people said I should do," he said.

The great-grandson of an orphan of the Great Irish Famine, McCloskey grew up in Loma Linda, Calif., and attended Stanford University Law School. He interrupted his studies to fight in the Korean War and ended up leading more bayonet charges than any American since the Civil War. He earned two Purple Hearts, the Navy Cross and the Silver Star for his outstanding service as a Marine.

McCloskey then became an attorney, focusing on environmental law.

Fellow environmentalists hail McCloskey's work. In 1963-66, he represented the first lawsuit against leveling San Bruno Mountain to fill in the San Francisco Bay and also fought a gargantuan battle against PG&E and the Atomic Energy Commission, which wanted to install huge energy towers through residents' private property in Woodside for the new Stanford Linear Accelerator.

"It was a colossal experience. It was one guy taking on the establishment: the federal government, and PG&E," said Mary Davey, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District board member and a longtime activist.

In the end, green, less-obtrusive poles were helicoptered in rather than razing mountainsides during construction -- a first, Davey said.

Nationally, McCloskey co-authored the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

In 1991, as an attorney, he won a lawsuit against two paper mill giants on behalf of the Humboldt Surfrider Foundation, for polluting the Pacific Ocean. It was the second largest Clean Water Act suit in American history, Caughlan said.

McCloskey supported his fledgling law practice in the 1950s by representing citizens groups, he said. He was the attorney for the Greenmeadow Association in Palo Alto, when 242 residents who bought homes from Joseph Eichler felt he had reneged on a promise to keep the swimming pool, park and community center only for the buyers.

"They paid me $5 each, and I got him to cede the center to the community," he said.

In exploring McCloskey's life, Caughlan's documentary reveals the basis behind some of his controversial stands.

He called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in part because Israel violated a treaty with the United States against using cluster bombs against civilians and in urban areas. The bombs were being supplied by the U.S. government, the film states.

Many of McCloskey's old-time Jewish supporters are still upset with his stand and declined to talk about him for this story.

But David Teitelbaum, rabbi emeritus at Congregation (formerly Temple) Beth Jacob in Redwood City, still keeps his lengthy correspondence with McCloskey, only considering throwing it away two weeks ago. But he decided to preserve the letters as a good example of what occurred at that time in history, he said.

"I don't believe he is really anti-Semitic but he said things that anti-Semites say. He long felt that the American Jewish community was monolithic, and he felt the Jewish community had too much influence on Congress," said Teitelbaum, whose son Joshua resigned as McCloskey's administrative assistant over the controversy.

For his part, McCloskey remains adamant that a two-state solution is the only way to prevent the continuous cycle of wars. He said he feels somewhat vindicated by the acceptance of some American Jewish intellectuals of the two-state solution.

McCloskey took other controversial stands: When Nixon bombed Cambodia -- after Congress had stripped the president's authorization to make war without a formal declaration by Congress -- McCloskey engaged in a heated argument in the back of a limousine with Nixon's close adviser John Ehrlichman, coming out against the war.

In 1972, he ran against the president. And he tried to impeach Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

McCloskey faced serious challenges to re-election as a result of his stands. But Caughlan and others said his strategic prowess enabled him to overcome an all-out Republican assault against his re-election.

He effectively got then-Vice President Gerald Ford to do a campaign appearance on his behalf in 1974. And he re-registered liberal Stanford students as Republicans in 1972, narrowly beating his challenger, Gordon Knapp of Atherton, by 800 votes.

Knapp recalled the campaign during a brief phone call.

"He was a man of different faces," Knapp said. He didn't elaborate.

Harry Bremond, a partner at Palo Alto law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, remembers McCloskey's personal contributions to East Palo Alto.

"As long as I've known him, he's always had a sense of social justice and equality. ... He believed that a lawyer's role was to participate and make a difference," Bremond said.

McCloskey brought Bremond, then an attorney in East Palo Alto, into his practice, McCloskey Wilson, which became Wilson Sonsini.

"His contributions were significant. There were no African-Americans in private practice between San Mateo and San Jose. It was unbelievably bold," Bremond said.

Years later, McCloskey fought against incorporation of East Palo Alto. He said he took up the cause after Nixon cut off all federal aid to East Palo Alto -- a result of McCloskey calling for his impeachment. That hurt the city for a very long time. But San Mateo County was not willing to support the city, and he didn't believe East Palo Alto had an adequate tax base to become independent, he said.

McCloskey still takes up a fight if he thinks there's a just battle.

He came out of semi-retirement on his Rumsey, Calif., farm in 2006 to challenge Pombo, who as chairman of the House Resources Committee was systematically undoing McCloskey's environmental work.

McCloskey garnered 32 percent of the vote in the primary, then backed his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, in the general election. McNerney won.

In 2007, fed up with the extremism he had fought against all of his life, McCloskey left the Republican Party and became a Democrat.

Caughlan said McCloskey's legacy is worthy of his country's highest honors.

In Japan, persons who are esteemed for their contributions are considered national treasures, Caughlan said.

"If we had that kind of thing in America, Pete would be honored," he said.