Rene — The Clinton Top 100: Where Are They Now?
Topic(s): US Analysis | Comments Off on Rene — The Clinton Top 100: Where Are They Now?The Clinton Top 100: Where Are They Now?
By M. Asif Ismail
Special Report
The Center for Public Integrity
March 31, 2003
(WASHINGTON, March 31, 2003) — Two years after they left the federal
government and one year after a ban that limited their lobbying
activities expired, more than half of the top one hundred Clinton White
House officials went on to represent, work for or advise businesses and
entities in areas they regulated while they were in office, a Center for
Public Integrity survey has found.
The officials include cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries,
undersecretaries, heads of independent agencies, and senior staff
members of the president’s executive office who were on the job on the
last day of the Clinton presidency.
The survey represents the first time that anyone has systematically
tracked the financial interests of the top officials of an
administration after they had left office. In a report released in
January last year, the Center examined the finances and professional
affiliations of the top 100 Bush officials prior to their joining the
administration.
The current survey offers a glimpse into how entrenched the phenomenon
of the revolving door?in which industries, corporations and special
interests hire ex-government officials hoping to gain access to their
former office and colleagues?has become in Washington. No one knows
precisely what percentage of officials, historically, take up private
sector jobs where questions of potential conflicts of interest could
arise, but those who have followed presidential appointments for decades
say the number of Clinton officials who made such switches is about
average.
“It is a normal number, or maybe smaller than normal number,”
presidential scholar G. Calvin Mackenzie told the Center. Mackenzie, the
Distinguished Presidential Professor of American Government at Colby
College, is author of several books and studies on presidential
appointments, including Innocent Until Nominated: The Breakdown of the
Presidential Appointments Process and The Politics of Presidential
Appointments.
Since leaving office, at least 17 top Clinton staffers have lobbied on
behalf of corporate or individual clients, including former Deputy
Secretary of Treasury Stuart E. Eizenstat and former Director of White
House Legislative Affairs Charles Brain. Not all of them are currently
registered to lobby.
Another 10 have joined law firms that also lobby, including three past
Cabinet members: Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, Interior Chief
Bruce Babbitt and Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.
An additional two-dozen have found positions in the private sector as
executives or directors. They include Vice President Al Gore, Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen.
Only those Clinton officials who stayed on until January 19, 2001 and
beyond to hand over the bureaucratic baton to the Bush team were
included in the survey. Not counted were senior staffers who’d left
office in favor of K Street?which houses many of Washington’s
influential lobby and law firms?and other private sector jobs towards
the end of Clinton’s term. These include former White House counsel Jack
Quinn (the lawyer for American-Swiss businessman Marc Rich, who was
granted a controversial last-minute pardon by the outgoing president),
Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, and former Special Assistant for
Legislative Affairs Dan Tate Jr.
Revolving Door
In recent years, a slew of high-profile, senior figures from successive
administrations and members of Congress have left public service for
private sector jobs. While some became corporate executives, consultants
and directors, others joined K Street firms that lobby on behalf of
businesses and special interests.
One of the most prominent examples is Vice President Dick Cheney, who
went to work for Halliburton Corp. after leaving the Defense Department
in the early 1990s. Cheney’s predecessor, Defense Secretary Frank
Carlucci, left the Reagan White House in January 1989 and became a
managing director at the private global investment firm Carlyle Group
later that year. He has been the chairman of the company since 1993.
Robert Rubin, one of the architects of 1990s’ New Economy, left
Clinton’s Department of Treasury in July 1999 to become a top executive
of Citigroup in October of the same year. His predecessor, Lloyd
Bentsen, joined Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand as a
lobbyist. William Daley, the former Commerce secretary who quit the
cabinet to head Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign, is now
with telecom giant SBC Communications.
Similarly, some leading members of Congress have gone on to lobby after
their stints in government. Senate Majority Leaders George Mitchell and
Robert Dole both registered to lobby after leaving the Senate. According
to the New York Times, at least 22 percent of those leaving Congress in
the 1990s became lobbyists.
While there is nothing illegal about this dance between private and
public sectors, government ethics groups, some academic critics and
Washington watchers have long raised ethical questions about the
practice.
No one expects government employees “to go into a desert” after leaving
public service, said Stuart Rothenberg, editor-in-chief and publisher of
The Rothenberg Political Report and a respected commentator. “But there
is an appearance of potential conflicts of interest when individuals
move between businesses and government,” he told the Center for Public
Integrity. “They could be carrying allegiances and relationships that
are bound to raise [ethical] questions.”
Nikos Passas, a professor at Temple University and expert on corruption
and transnational crime, is even more blunt in his criticism. “[These
officials] take measures that will benefit companies and interests
(while in power) and then they take positions with them,” he told the
Center. “I call that ‘deferred bribery.'”
Defenders say current ethics laws adequately guarantee against any
potential conflicts of interest. Legal scholars such as Ted Schneyer of
the University of Arizona maintain that lobbying by ex-officials is
within the law and can only become a concern if they continue to wield
influence with their former agencies.
What’s more, Mackenzie said, there is nothing illegal or wrong about
public servants seeking positions with the private sector as long as
they don’t violate the post-employment regulations that have been in
place since 1978. Those laws were enacted to prevent retiring officials
from reaping personal benefit on their knowledge and contacts in a way
that would undermine public offices, or give unfair advantage to one
interest over another, he said.
The issue of the revolving door was prominent during the 1992
presidential election. Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman who later
founded the Reform Party, vowed to “slam the revolving door shut” by
forbidding “anyone who has held any position in the federal government
to be a paid lobbyist for any domestic interest for five years after
leaving government.”
Candidate Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, also vowed to
discourage the practice, which he did just after he won the presidency.
In his first year at the Oval Office, Clinton signed an executive order
increasing the mandatory non-lobbying period to five years. It also
banned 1,100 top government officials from lobbying for foreign
governments and put other restrictions on jobs after government service.
But shortly before the end of his second term, Clinton revoked that
order, a move that was decried by some ethicists and critics.
Lobbyists
Most of the Clinton White House officials the Center analyzed were
eligible to lobby their former agencies after January 19, 2002, a year
to the date of their last day at work. (Some Clinton aides did not
resign until President Bush nominated their successors.) The 1978 Ethics
in Government Act prohibits outgoing government officials from lobbying
the departments and agencies they served for one year after leaving the
service.
Of the Clinton aides registered to lobby, Eizenstat and Deputy Attorney
General Eric Holder are partners at Covington and Burling, a mega
law-lobby firm in Washington. The former president consulted Holder
before granting the controversial last-minute pardon to Rich.
Eizenstat lobbied on behalf of an array of U.S. and foreign companies,
disclosure forms filed by Covington revealed. According to documents
from the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Unit, the
one-time No. 2 at Treasury, who is also a former U.S. ambassador to the
European Union, undersecretary of the Commerce Department and
undersecretary of State, also represented the government of Argentina.
He lobbied the United States and multilateral organizations to give
financial aid to the Latin American country after its economy collapsed
a year ago.
Domestically, Eizenstat lobbied the State Department and Treasury on
behalf of petroleum and petrochemicals giant BP America Inc., which was
opposed to the capital market sanctions in the Sudan Peace Act, passed
by the House. His other clients include Aloha Airlines, Boeing, Marco
International Corporation, PPL Corporation and the Egyptian
International Economic Forum. The issues he lobbied range from loan
guarantees for airlines to debt-relief for Russia and electricity
distribution in Brazil.
Eizenstat rejected the notion that his lobbying could cause conflicts of
interest. “I clear all questions about my representations with the
Treasury and State departments,” he said. “I frequently call officials
of these departments to see that there are no legal and ethical
questions. I am very careful about it? I check with officials about it.”
In the case of Brain and former White House chief of staff John Podesta,
who were lobbyists before joining the administration, the revolving door
came full circle, with both returning to their former profession.
Brain originally left Bergner, Bockorny in 1997 to become Clinton’s
legislative affairs director, and subsequently rejoined the old firm as
a principal. The rechristened Bergner, Bockorny, Castagnetti, Hawkins &
Brain, Inc. boasts dozens of superstar clients, including Boeing,
Monsanto Co., NewsCorp USA and Northrop Grumman Corp.
K Street veteran Podesta registered to lobby under the banner of
PodestaMattoon, a firm run by his brother Anthony Podesta and Dan
Mattoon. Before joining the first Clinton administration as assistant to
the president and staff secretary, Podesta was president and general
counsel of Podesta Associates, Inc. PodestaMattoon has scores of
clients, including Lockheed Martin, Genentech, Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America, Viacom Vivendi and the Washington Post Co.
Podesta is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
At least three Clinton aides have joined companies or trade groups as
in-house lobbyists. Another four have launched lobbying careers by
setting up their own firms.
Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy F. de Leon was hired by Boeing, in July
2001, to head its lobbying operations in Washington, D.C.
According to the Department of Defense, Boeing was awarded contracts
worth $16.6 billion in the 2002 financial year, second only to Lockheed
Martin, which had secured deals for $17 billion during the same period.
In the last two years, Boeing has lobbied on a number of defense-related
issues, including “aeronautics research and development,” “defense
programs,” “defense and intelligence appropriations programs,”
“Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002,” and “Coast Guard
Authorization Act 2002,” according to disclosure documents obtained by
the Center for Public Integbrity.
Robert L. Mallett, former deputy secretary of Commerce, is senior vice
president at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. His colleague at Commerce and
undersecretary for export administration, William A. Reinsch, heads the
National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based trade advocacy group.
The NFTC is supported by exporters such as Boeing, Chevron, Citicorp,
Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Halliburton, IBM, Microsoft and
PepsiCo, among others.
Reinsch also serves as a commissioner at the U.S.-China Security Review
Commission, a bipartisan panel created by Congress to assess the
national security implications of business ties with Beijing.
Former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency James Lee
Witt has started a consulting and lobby firm, James Lee Witt Associates
LLC. Nextel Communications, a top wireless communications services
provider, is among its clients. The filings also showed that Witt’s
group contacted FEMA on behalf of a client, Whelen Engineering Co.
Ricchetti, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, started Ricchetti Inc.,
where he was joined by one of his former aides, Jay Heimbach. In its
first year, the firm lured heavyweight clients such as General Motors
Corp., AT&T, Siemens Corp., Eli Lilly & Co., Pharmacia Corp. and Fannie
Mae.
Former Transportation chief Slater heads the transportation practice
group at Patton Boggs, which, according to the National Journal, is the
number two lobby shop in Washington. The former secretary, whose areas
of expertise are business, trade, and transportation issues, is focusing
on “many of the public policy and transportation objectives that were
set under his leadership, including aviation competition and congestion
mitigation, maritime initiatives, high-speed rail corridor development,
and overall transportation safety and funding,” according to the firm’s
Web site. Documents revealed that Slater lobbied for Evergreen
International Aviation Inc. and Ancore Inspection Technologies, a
manufacturer of explosives detection technologies.
Another Clintonite to enter K Street with his own lobby shop is Joel P.
Johnson, previously senior advisor to the president for policy and
communications, who teamed up with Washington law firm Swidler Berlin
Shereff Friedman, LLP to found a public affairs consulting firm, The
Harbor Group. Joanna Slaney, special assistant to the president for
legislative affairs, is a director at the firm. Since leaving the White
House, they have represented Airbus Industrie North America Inc., Dean
Foods Co. and PhRMA, among others.
James Hall, former chief of the National Transportation Safety Board,
and Mickey Ibarra, Assistant to the President and Director of
Intergovernmental Affairs, are the two other senior Clinton staffers to
establish lobby shops. Hall & Associates, which specializes in
transportation safety and security issues, represented Maximus, Porsche
AG and Republic Parking. Mickey Ibarra & Associates has among its
clients Verizon Communications.
In addition to Slater, two former cabinet colleagues have spun the
revolving door, advising and representing clients in the areas they
regulated while in office. Agriculture Secretary Glickman, who is now
the director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School at
Harvard, is also a senior advisor at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLP,
one of the biggest law and lobby firms in the country. Glickman advises
clients on food and agriculture, health, biotechnology and international
trade, among other issues, according to the firm’s Web site. The scores
of clients the firm represents include supermarket chain Food Lion and
Farmland & Grassland Protection Coalition (which includes the Nature
Conservancy), according to lobbying disclosure reports.
Interior Secretary Babbitt is of counsel at the environment, land and
resources division of Latham & Watkins, another giant law and lobby
firm. According to documents obtained by the Center, in 2002 Babbitt
also did lobbying work on behalf of the real estate development firm
Pleasant County Ltd.
Private Sector
Leading the pack of the government leaders-turned-executives is Vice
President Gore. Long before he announced his decision to skip the 2004
presidential election, the winner of the popular vote in the 2000 race
has been drawing salaries from the private sector. He joined the Los
Angeles-based financial service holding firm Metropolitan West Financial
in November 2001.
The company said at the time of the hiring that Gore would develop
business strategies in biotechnology and information technology. The
former vice president was one of the leading technology advocates within
the Clinton administration.
Another company that had great success in hiring former top ranking
government officials is The Carlyle Group. The firm, which already had
in its ranks such influential politicians as Carlucci, former secretary
of State and Treasury James A. Baker III and George H.W. Bush, the 41st
president of the United States, has tapped two key people from the last
administration: William Kennard, formerly at the Federal Communications
Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission chief Arthur Levitt.
Kennard, who regulated the telecommunications industry during the
Clinton presidency, is a managing director responsible for global
telecommunications and media at the company. Levitt, the longest-serving
SEC commissioner, is a senior advisor to the firm.
Also cashing in on their experience in government are Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary Cohen, who both started
international consulting firms. The Cohen Group, launched shortly after
the former Pentagon chief left office, represents corporations and
interests in a variety of areas, including global telecommunications,
defense and aerospace. Business law firm Piper Rudnick is a partner of
the Cohen Group.
The group claims on its Web site that its principals have “a century and
a half of combined experience in the Congress, the Defense Department,
the State Department, the White House, and state and local governments”
and that they “have developed extensive expertise and relationships with
key international political, economic, and business leaders and acquired
invaluable experiences with the individuals and institutions that affect
our clients’ success abroad.”
Likewise, Albright’s firm, The Albright Group, advises businesses on
global issues. Her cabinet colleague and EPA chief Carol M. Browner is
one of the principals of the group.
Former DEA administrator and 32-year agency veteran Donnie Marshall
briefly worked for DynCorp as the vice president of international
operations, after leaving the government in July 2001. The company, a
contractor doing business with State, Defense, Agriculture and Energy
Departments, supported fumigation efforts in Colombia. DynCorp, recently
acquired by Computer Sciences Corporation, trained pilots for operations
against drug traffickers in Colombia. DEA under Marshall was a key
participant in Plan Colombia.
However, Marshall told the Center that DEA wasn’t involved in any of the
contract works that DynCorp was doing and, therefore, question of
conflict of interests did not arise.
Marshall is just one of the several other top Clinton officials who have
found executive positions in the private sector. Others include:
– Clinton’s National Security Advisor Samuel Berger heads a
Washington-based consulting firm, Stonebridge International, which
advises companies worldwide.
– Former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman is on the firm’s board of
advisors.
– Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering became
a senior vice president at Boeing, looking after its international
relations division, and served as a member of the company’s executive
council.
– William J. Lynn, former undersecretary of Defense (comptroller), is a
vice president at Raytheon, a leading defense supplier.
The firm was the fourth largest defense contractor in fiscal year 2002,
snatching deals worth $7 billion. Earlier Lynn worked briefly at DFI
International, a Washington-based research, analysis and consulting
firm.
– Clinton’s last press secretary, Jake Siewert, is a vice president of
global communications and public strategy at aluminum giant Alcoa, which
was once headed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.
– Louis J. Freeh, former director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, is a senior vice chairman at MBNA, the largest
independent credit card issuer in the world.
– Richard Holbrooke, ambassador of the United States to the United
Nations, is the vice chairman of Perseus, a merchant bank and private
equity fund management firm.
Corporate boards
One career option that came easily to many officials from the Clinton
team after their stint at government was corporate directorship. The
Center found that at least a dozen members from the previous
administration are on the boards of major corporations, with some of
them serving in more than one company.
For instance, Vice President Gore was recently named to the board of
directors of Apple Computers. He is also a senior adviser to the
Internet search firm Google, Inc.
Defense Secretary Cohen is a director of IDT Corporation, Cendant Corp.,
United Shipping & Technology, Inc. and Nasdaq Corporation. From April
2001 to April 2002, he was on the board of Global Crossing.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, now the governor New Mexico, briefly
served on the board of Venoco Inc, an oil and gas company. As secretary,
Richardson had invited the Venoco president to serve on the National
Petroleum Council.
Richardson also served on the board of City National Corporation,
Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. and Peregrine Systems Inc.
Several colleagues of Richardson are on the boards of various
businesses.
Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman is on the board of Cummins Inc. and MGM
Mirage. She is also chair of both a Coca-Cola Company oversight task
force and Toyota’s advisory board on diversity.
Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami, is on the boards of
Gannett Co. Inc., Lennar Corporation and UnitedHealth Group Inc.
Holbrooke also serves on the boards of Coca-Cola, AOL Time Warner and
Human Genome, all giant multinationals with worldwide business
interests, and American International Group Inc., a U.S.-based
international insurance and financial services organization.
Levitt, the former SEC chairman, is on the boards of Bloomberg L.P,
Neuberger Berman and CCBN, a company that helps public companies use the
Internet to communicate with investors.
Kennard is a director of the New York Times Co. and Nextel
Communications, Inc. He also sits on the boards of Bloomberg L.P,
Neuberger Berman, and CCBN and serves as an advisory board member of M&T
Bank Corporation.
Ernie Moniz, undersecretary of Energy, is a member of the strategic
advisory council at USEC Inc., the world’s leading supplier of enriched
uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
The Ideas Industry
Other preferred career choices of the Clinton officials were public
speaking, academia and think tanks. While many of his aides are on the
lecture circuit as part-timers, the 42nd president has been averaging at
least one speech a week and has made several millions in speaking
engagements. According to disclosure reports filed by former first lady
and current New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in 2001 alone, the
former president addressed more than 50 gatherings and took in upwards
of $9 million.
Academia has also lured its share of top Clinton aides. Secretary of the
Treasury Lawrence H. Summers is now president of Harvard University.
Secretary of State Albright, who left Georgetown University to become a
diplomat, returned to the campus as Michael and Virginia Mortara
Distinguished Professor. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Andrew Cuomo is a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School;
Commissioner of Social Security Kenneth S. Apfel teaches at the
University of Texas at Austin; Office of Management and Budget Director
Jacob J. Lew is an executive vice president and professor of public
administration at New York University; Defense Department Undersecretary
Jacques Gansler is a professor at the University of Maryland; and Dr.
Neal Lane, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is a
professor at Rice University.
Gore, who taught briefly at Columbia after his defeat in the
presidential elections, is a visiting professor at the University of
California in Los Angeles, Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and
Middle Tennessee State University.
Another prominent Clintonite to cross over to the ideas industry is
former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who is now the
president of Brookings Institution. The liberal think tank is also home
to two of his former co-workers: Deputy National Security Advisor James
B. Steinberg, who is a director of foreign policy studies at Brookings,
and Gene Sperling, assistant to the president for economic policy and
director of the National Economic Council, who is a guest scholar.
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