[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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