The Master Fixer in a Fix
Power broker Vernon Jordan loves to come to Clinton's
rescue. Now he may need help himself
By Eric Pooley
(TIME, February 2) -- Beneath the practiced politesse of his delivery, Vernon Jordan's
eyes were blazing. His sonorous voice was edged with contempt
for the very idea that a roomful of reporters could question his
honor. Standing under the hot lights last Thursday, Bill
Clinton's close friend and unofficial adviser made it clear that
this media circus meant little to him. "Never apologize, never
explain"--that had been his motto for 17 years, ever since he
left the presidency of the National Urban League after a racist
gunman nearly took his life, going on to become Washington's
most powerful back-room fixer. Now he had to violate that
principle and offer a partial explanation of his role in the
tawdry matter of Monica Lewinsky. "After I shall have read my
statement," he said, wrapping himself in a protective layer of
syntax, "I will not take questions. I'm going to leave and go
back to work."
But this was the essence of Jordan's work--doing what he could
to help a powerful friend. Only this time, Jordan was forced to
do it in public, which broke the cardinal rule of the big-time
Washington operator. Jordan, like other dealmakers before
him--Clark Clifford, Edward Bennett Williams, Jordan's partner
Robert Strauss--is a larger-than-life figure. But unlike them,
he chooses to be virtually invisible--a self-protective
mechanism he put into place after he was shot. He makes few
speeches, shuns TV, grants almost no interviews and never, ever
discusses his friendship with Clinton--with anyone. That
discretion magnifies his value because Jordan appears at
Clinton's side at the direst of times. He was with Governor
Clinton in 1980 after the young pol's bitter electoral defeat.
He was with President Clinton on the night of Vincent Foster's
suicide, the day of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's fatal plane
crash, and the night consultant Dick Morris was thrown overboard
at the 1996 Democratic National Convention because of a sex
scandal. He knows how to clean up a mess. "The last thing he'd
ever do is betray a friendship," Clinton once told the New York
Times. "It's good to have a friend like that."
Jordan wields enormous influence over Clinton, yet sees no
conflict when one of the 11 blue-chip corporations of which he
is a director ends up profiting from a decision he helped the
President make. He oversees a staff of close to 100 registered
lobbyists but provides little or no public disclosure of his own
influence-peddling activities. He earns $1 million a year from a
law practice that requires him to file no brief and visit no
courtroom, because his billable hours tend to be logged in posh
restaurants, on cellular telephones, in the tufted-leather
backseats of limousines--making a deft introduction here,
nudging a legislative position there, ironing out an indelicate
situation before it makes the papers.
But the Lewinsky problem--which Jordan, according to Lewinsky
confidant Linda Tripp, tried to solve by counseling Lewinsky in
the back of his limo--made the papers anyway, forcing the fixer
into the spotlight. Lewinsky reportedly told Tripp that Jordan
said to her, "They can't prove anything...Your answer is, 'It
didn't happen, it wasn't me.'" If that turns out to be true,
Jordan could be on the hook for suborning perjury and
obstruction of justice. And if Lewinsky cooperates with
independent counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity,
Starr would presumably try to work his way up the ladder to
Jordan--and Clinton could find out once and for all what his
friend is made of.
"I want to say to you absolutely and unequivocally that Ms.
Lewinsky told me in no uncertain terms that she did not have a
sexual relationship with the President," Jordan said last week,
without explaining how the subject had come up. "At no time did
I ever say, suggest or intimate to her that she should lie." He
admitted introducing her to a lawyer after Paula Jones slapped
her with a subpoena, and said he had been "privileged to assist"
Lewinsky with her "vocational aspirations," securing job
interviews for her at American Express and Revlon. He did this
not because he wanted to buy her silence but because he believes
"in giving a helping hand...[to] young and old, male and female,
black and white, Hispanic and Asian, rich and poor."
Jordan, 62, is indeed known for helping others, opening doors
and making introductions for hundreds of acquaintances over the
years. But what moved him to pull so many strings for this
former White House intern, an obscure woman whom others have
characterized as unremarkable? Her "drive, ambition and
personality," Jordan told the reporters, "were impressive."
If Jordan's performance seemed stagy and even sanctimonious, it
may have been because "drive, ambition and personality" are not
the only attributes he and Clinton are known to find impressive
in young women. "Large men of large appetites" is one of the
euphemisms that have been used when broaching the subject of
their legendary womanizing. Jordan's reputation as a ladies' man
dates back to the 1970s, when the civil rights leader was
traveling constantly and his first wife Shirley, who died in
1985, was restricted to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis.
Jordan, who remarried in 1986, does not discuss his reputation
except in the most oblique terms: "I like people. I've always
liked people. I like all kinds of people. And I'm not going to
stop liking people."
His second wife Ann has shown good humor on the subject. "I'm
sure women find him attractive," she told the Washington Post in
1992. "I do."
Clinton and Jordan have plenty in common. They are both sons of
the South, civil rights advocates, products of the 1960s who
steered to the center on their path to power, world-class
storytellers who like to think of themselves as capacious
spirits in the crabbed and pinched Washington scene. Their
banter is sexually charged. At a White House dinner in 1995, to
cite an example, Clinton found himself sitting next to a
statuesque blond and at one point, according to an account in
Washington Monthly, turned to Jordan and jokingly told him to
keep his "hands off" the woman, because "I saw her first,
Vernon." A Washington insider who has played golf with Clinton
and Jordan on several occasions told TIME that on the links and
in the locker room, "all they talk about is 'p_____.'" Jordan
has basically admitted as much. "We talk like men," he told a
reporter in 1996. "There's nothing wrong with a little
locker-room talk."
Both were raised in lower-middle-class circumstances by strong
mothers who foresaw great things for their sons. Jordan was born
in Atlanta in 1935; his father was a postal worker, his mother a
caterer to upper-class whites. Tending bar at their parties,
Jordan saw the kind of life he wanted to lead, a kind of life
then denied to blacks. His aspirations led him into the civil
rights movement. After earning a bachelor's degree at DePauw
University and a law degree from Howard, he came to prominence
in 1961 when a howling white mob tried to prevent a young woman
named Charlayne Hunter from becoming one of the first blacks to
enter the University of Georgia. Jordan, a law clerk of 25, used
his 6-ft. 4-in. body as a battering ram, clearing a path through
the mob.
Such flash-point confrontations would be a rarity for Jordan. He
was a lawyer, not a preacher or street activist, and after a
risky period spent registering black voters across the South, he
came to eschew marches and sit-ins in favor of working inside
the system and raising money from white-owned corporations. In
1970 he became executive director of the United Negro College
Fund; a year later, he was running the moderate, pro-business
National Urban League. He got to know everyone who mattered in
corporate America--white, black, whatever--and in politics as
well. He played tennis regularly with John Ehrlichman, the Nixon
aide, and the Urban League's federal contracts soared. Before
the '70s had ended, he was enjoying a chauffeured Mercury, a
Fifth Avenue apartment, an annual getaway to Martha's Vineyard,
seats on four corporate boards and a reputation among some
blacks as a "sellout." He didn't see it that way. "Black power
will remain just a shout and a cry, unless it is channeled into
constructive efforts to...influence the established institutions
of American politics," he said.
Even a moderate like Jordan was a target. In 1980 a white
supremacist took aim with a .30-06 rifle and shot him in the
back in a motel parking lot in Fort Wayne, Ind. The crime was
committed at 2 a.m. as Jordan, who had delivered a speech on
race relations earlier that night, was arriving back at his
motel with a blond divorce who had been entertaining him at her
home. It was explained that Jordan and the woman had been up
late discussing racial issues.
The near death experience caused him to remake his life.
Eighteen months later, he left the Urban League; friends from
those days believe he decided not to die for the cause. In
January 1982 he accepted an offer from Robert Strauss, the
silky, down-home Democratic kingmaker, to join Akin, Gump,
Strauss, Hauer & Feld, a firm with one of the biggest practices
in Washington.
As rainmaker and fixer, Jordan soon equaled Strauss himself. But
unlike Strauss, he didn't advertise it. "Jordan has been a
stealth presence in Washington," says Charles Lewis, executive
director of the Center for Public Integrity. "He's a
super-lawyer who is rarely seen or heard, but who hobnobs with
the high and mighty and receives large sums for doing so. Little
is known of how much he traffics on his relationship with Bill
Clinton. He is close to the most powerful people and does not
need or want publicity."
Jordan has said that as early as 1980, he was convinced that
Clinton would one day be President. In 1991, when Clinton was
thinking seriously about a run for the White House, Jordan
invited him to be his guest at the Bilderberg conference in
Germany, an annual meeting of the international business and
political elite. Jordan has called it Clinton's "coming-out
party."
The next year, after Clinton won the presidency, he tapped
Jordan to be co-chairman of his transition team. It was the
first time most observers realized that Clinton, who had run as
a Washington outsider, was so close to this consummate insider.
There was talk that Jordan could have any Cabinet post he
wanted, but in the end he wanted no post at all. Jordan saw no
reason to submit himself to financial disclosures or give up the
clout and freedom of private practice. He knew he could speak to
Clinton whenever he chose, on any topic he chose. After all, the
two men saw each other frequently for golf. The Clintons spent
Christmas Eve with the Jordans and regularly visited them on the
Vineyard in the summer. Says Jordan's friend Richard Moe,
president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation:
"Public life can be a pretty high-risk proposition." But as
Jordan is finding out, the private life of a fixer carries risks
too. He could go before Starr's grand jury in Little Rock as
early as this week.
--With reporting by Jack E. White and Adam Zagorin/Washington
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