Whenever scandal has rocked the White House, Bruce Lindsey has been at the center of the cleanup effort, calling around his native Arkansas to gather information and enlist allies, devising legal strategy with the President’s other lawyers, steering journalists away from negative conclusions and soothing the President just by being there, ready to watch a movie or play a game of hearts.
As Clinton’s longtime political ferret, Lindsey, 48, has always understood the centripetal nature of power–that to get to the core of it, you almost have to disappear. But last week he shed his cherished invisibility, when instead of managing the President’s problems, he became one himself. It was revealed that federal prosecutors plan to name Lindsey an “unindicted co-conspirator” in an alleged plot to hide from the irs large cash withdrawals by Clinton’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign, which Lindsey served as treasurer.
Lindsey is so unassuming that during the 1992 presidential campaign he declined to take a conspicuous role, recommending instead George Stephanopoulos, and was perhaps the only aide to stay away from television cameras. But last Wednesday he went searching for them outside the White House to tell the world he’d done nothing wrong. “Bruce would never hurt the President,” says a White House colleague. “If there were anything to this, he would have resigned a long time ago.”
The two met in 1968, when both worked for Arkansas Senator William Fulbright. Twelve years later, after losing his first re-election bid for Governor, Clinton found refuge in Lindsey’s law firm and plotted a comeback. When Clinton launched his unlikely bid to unseat George Bush in 1991, Lindsey was his only traveling companion, and the two trekked anonymously through airports, carrying their own bags. Once in the White House, Clinton put him in charge of personnel, but his range has always been unlimited.
As a lawyer with old ties to the Little Rock Democratic establishment, Lindsey has spent much of his time managing the impact of Clinton’s past on his present. During the recent trial of the Clintons’ Whitewater business partners, Lindsey kept tabs on the proceedings through friends, relaying even small developments to the President. During the Troopergate scandal in 1993, Lindsey enlisted the former head of Clinton’s security detail to give a TV interview favorable to the President. His hovering role puts him constantly on the road, where he wears two pagers and often has to be reminded to eat. His family has remained in Little Rock.
Much of what has kept Lindsey at Clinton’s side over the past 28 years is an inner confidence that comes from his family’s Midwestern Presbyterianism–“a sense of predestination,” as White House senior aide Mack McLarty once put it. Lindsey is often the one in high-level meetings who speaks only if he has to. That sense of security will come in handy as he adjusts to a role reversal–watching the President defend him instead of the other way around.
–By James Carney/Washington. With reporting by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum/Washington
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