[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              JOHN PODESTA

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this year, the Washington Post 
wrote an article about one of the most extraordinary people in 
Washington.
  John D. Podesta is an assistant to the President and is also White 
House staff secretary.
  John Podesta is also a very special friend, a valued adviser, and an 
admired public servant. John has worked with me as a key political 
adviser and with me and the U.S. Senate in capacities ranging from 
legal counsel to chief of staff. In every capacity, he has set the 
standard of excellence.
  I have benefited greatly from his friendship and advice. Our country 
is benefited every day by his service to America.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article from the 
Washington Post profiling John Podesta be printed in the Record at this 
point.
  I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 5, 1994]

     When Cleaning Up Is the Worst Job: A Whitewater Success Story

                         (By David Von Drehle)

       John Podesta has been questioned before a federal grant 
     jury, he has been obliged to correct the president of the 
     United States--veeerry carefully--he has been assigned to 
     explain the First Lady's commodities trading, and then to 
     change his explanation.
       And he is a Whitewater success story.
       This has been life among the ruins of the Clinton 
     administration's early Whitewater damage control. Podesta's 
     job is to clean up the mess that was made the first time 
     around. But so extensive was the mess that the cleaning man 
     got dirty.
       A lot of insiders say Podesta has the worst job in 
     Washington. They're not talking about his official role. 
     Officially, he is White House staff secretary--one of those 
     gray but powerful jobs. (The staff secretary controls the 
     paper going to and from the president, and is best known as 
     the guy with the arm that reaches into famous scenes, like 
     the Israeli-PLO peace accord signing, to put a historic 
     document on the president's desk.)
       What folks call the worst job in Washington is Podesta's 
     unofficial duty: White House cleanup chief. When bombs go off 
     in the nation's capital, most people assume the classic 
     Washington position--duck your head and cover your posterior. 
     Podesta shoulders a shovel and trudges into the rubble.
       Ever since subpoenas began arriving at the White House, and 
     the administration began to understand that finger-wagging 
     and wounded pleas would not solve the crisis, Podesta has 
     been trying to pull together documents, recreate long-lost 
     wheelings and dealings, and generally patch up the image of a 
     dissembling White House. Slowly, with frequent setbacks, he 
     may be making some progress.
       The most obvious sign came late last month, when Hillary 
     Rodman Clinton called a news conference and fielded 
     Whitewater questions for an hour and a quarter. As she spoke, 
     Podesta--an intense, slight man with sharp features and a 
     quick laugh--watched happily from the edge of the room. Much 
     of the senior White House staff was caught flat-footed by the 
     news conference; Podesta helped in the First Lady's 
     preparation.
       Along came the deputy White House counsel Joel Klein and 
     Clinton family lawyer David Kendall, Podesta fields scores of 
     telephone calls each day from reporters. Instead of scolding 
     them, he generally tries to answer their questions. He has 
     collected and released hundreds of pages of documents: old 
     tax returns, commodities trading records. Whitewater 
     corporate tax documents.
       ``There's been a distinct change of approach since John's 
     taken on this job,'' said one senior administration official. 
     ``Since John has gotten in, you've seen a fairly aggressive 
     presentation of facts and documents, and a tightly 
     coordinated effort.''
       Colleagues at the White House give Podesta high marks for 
     pooling the Whitewater frenzy in a few offices--giving the 
     rest of the staff a chance to tackle other tasks. As Podesta 
     says: ``People are back to business, and I'm absorbing most 
     of the arrows.''
       One veteran Democrat knowledgeable of the inner workings at 
     the White House, called Podesta's appearance as Whitewater 
     troubleshooter ``the most hopeful sign in a long time'' that 
     the administration might calm the tempest. Why? ``He's strong 
     as a political organizer, strong as a lawyer. He knows 
     Congress, and he can talk to the press. He has the probity. 
     And he understands a lawyer's job is simple: to solve your 
     client's problem.''
       Podesta's strategy is simple. Get the facts and make them 
     your weapon. An example of the Podesta style came recently: 
     He and Kendall were plowing through Hillary Clinton's 
     investment records, and they discovered a profit on which the 
     Clintons failed to pay taxes in their 1980 return. Fact was, 
     the statue of limitations was long past; moreover, an 
     Internal Revenue Service auditor had approved the Clintons' 
     1980 return. Legally, they were on solid ground.
       But Podesta hustled to 'fess up. Painful as it was, it was 
     better than having some newspaper reporter discover the 
     unpaid tax. An old foul-up is better than a fresh expose.
       Former White House counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum probably 
     would not have handled it this way. When he was dealing with 
     Whitewater, Nussbaum--an accomplished Wall Street lawyer--
     preferred the classic Wall Street approach: Lock the files, 
     hunkerdown, occasionally flip your enemies a middle-finger 
     salute.
       New York's ways are not Washington's ways. Here, we bury 
     people in paper and make nice by phone. ``You've got a lot of 
     people who can sit down and tell you the law,'' said Sen. 
     Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Podesta's boss for a number of 
     years. ``But they don't have a sense of the political 
     ramifications.''
       Podesta learned by doing, coming up through Democratic 
     Party ranks on the heels of his older brother, Tony, a 
     longtime political strategist. In state and national 
     campaigns spanning a generation--from Eugene McCarthy's 
     presidential bid in 1968 to the Clinton victory in 1992--
     Podesta, 45, learned the art of the sound bite, the care and 
     feeding of the press, the importance of answering fire with 
     fire (without wounding friends.)
       As Leahy's top aide on the Judiciary Committee, and later 
     chief counsel to the Senate Agriculture Committee, Podesta 
     also mastered the fine print of government. Over time, he 
     became the rare Washington figure who can match the nerds 
     detail-for-detail on, say, intellectual property law in the 
     digital age and hatch strategy with the backroom politicos. 
     ``John's both a rigorous lawyer and good pol and they don't 
     usually go together,'' said Leslie Dach, who worked with 
     Podesta on Michael S. Dukakis's ill-fated 1988 presidential 
     campaign. ``He can memorize bank records and also know how 
     they'll play in Peoria.''
       The lousy jobs began coming his way almost a year ago: The 
     first mess was the travel office. Seven employees of the 
     White House travel office had been fired, and the press was 
     full of charges of cronyism, money-grubbing, manipulation 
     of the FBI. Normally, the White House counsel's office 
     would handle it, but Nussbaum's staff was involved. Enter 
     Podesta.
       With his deputy, Todd Stern, Podesta went from office to 
     office around the White House asking people how they managed 
     to screw up so badly. Then he published his findings. He 
     linked important people--like Vince Foster, presidential 
     adviser George Stephanopoulos, even the First Lady hereself--
     to the debacle. Annoy your colleagues, embarrass your boss 
     ... the worst job in town.
       Except: Podesta pulled it off. His come-clean strategy 
     deflated the issue. ``It ended the story,'' Stephanopoulos 
     said.
       Podesta then was called in to preserve the nomination of 
     Joycelyn Elders to be surgeon general, when it seemed like 
     Elders might talk herself out of the job. Then he shepherded 
     William Gould's nomination to head the National Labor 
     Relations Board through a pack of grumbling conservative 
     senators. Next, he persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations 
     Committee that resort owner M. Larry Lawrence had 
     qualifications to be an ambassador beyond writing fat checks 
     to the president's party.
       Then came Whitewater.
       Podesta has made mistakes, including one doozy. When he 
     announced the tax error, he produced supporting documents, 
     which undermined an earlier description of one Clinton 
     commodities trading account. A reporter asked if the new 
     material made the old version ``inoperative.'' And Podesta 
     confirmed: ``That is inoperative.''
       ``I can't believe you repeated it!'' a colleague said to 
     him after the briefing. Only then did the scope of the error 
     sink in: ``Inoperative'' is a Watergate word. He had echoed 
     the quote of a Nixon aide. ``And the blood drained out of my 
     face,'' Podesta recalled.
       But in a White House where gaffes often turn into gaping 
     wounds, Podesta minimized the damage. Since uttering the 
     fateful word, Podesta has jumped on any reporter who has 
     tried to use ``inoperative'' to stand for anything beyond the 
     specific details of a single ancient commodities account. For 
     example, he fired off a better chiding a Washington Post 
     columnist: ``I have to publicly eat my mistakes. I hope you 
     acknowledge yours.''
       Podesta denies he has the worst job in Washington. ``I 
     actually like defending the president and the First Lady and 
     the administration,'' he said. But Whitewater is dramatically 
     more complex than his earlier crises: The stakes are higher, 
     more people are watching, the questions are more complicated, 
     the documentation is more sketchy.
       Sometimes, Podesta says, when he ventures into the First 
     Lady's office with the latest question about her finances, 
     Mrs. Clinton slaps her hand to her forehead and, exasperated, 
     says, ``I just can't remember any more!'' (Or words to that 
     effect) Podesta allows that he doesn't know all the answers--
     and so each quiet Whitewater day feels like the slow climb to 
     the top of a roller coaster.
       ``I'm trying to get the truth as best I can,'' he said 
     recently. ``And I believe in the truth of our position. We're 
     trying to get information out quickly, to avoid the 
     appearance of stonewalling. As we gather more information, we 
     correct our mistakes.
       ``I expect we'll take some more hits before it is over,'' 
     he said, ``but I believe we are going to get through it.''

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