scandal at clinton inc. - the new republic

9/23/13 1:20 AMScandal at Clinton Inc. - The New Republic

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Scandal at Clinton Inc.How Doug Band drove a wedge through a political dynasty

by Alec MacGillis | September 22, 2013

One Thursday evening last September, Bill Clinton, GeorgeW. Bush, and Tony Blair met in New York to conduct whatwas supposed to be a high-minded discourse on terrorism,geopolitics, and the global economy. The setting was elegantthe beaux arts ballroom of the Essex House, an iconictower on Central Park South. The 78-person VIP guest listincluded Harvey Weinstein, Eli Broad, Blackstone co-founders Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, SiliconValley impresario Sean Parker, Billie Jean King, GeorgePataki, and New York City police chief Ray Kelly, along with CEOs and top executives from companies likeDow Chemical, Coca-Cola, BP, and Bank of America. Somehow, these onetime world leaders, corporatetitans, and other notable personages converged in the center of New York without the event ever beingnoticed by the press.

The guests had been wrangled, persuaded, flattered, and otherwise enticed to attend by Doug Band, a tall manwith genial, unmemorable features and a deferential demeanor. In fact, the gathering was taking place in hisown building, underneath his expansive eighth-floor apartment, and it represented a major triumph for him.

Twelve years earlier, at the age of 27, Band had entered Clintons orbit as that lowliest of Washingtonarchetypes: the body man. He was the all-purpose aide who carried the bags, provided the pen, watched theclock, kept the cigars close, and ensured the Diet Cokes were always chilled. And after the inglorious end ofClintons presidency, Band had stayed on. It was he who had engineered Clintons transformation into aphilanthropist-king, and over the years, the pair had formed a bond that was more like father and son thanboss and factotum. The most important thing about Doug is that he sort of took control of PresidentClintons career at a moment when he was dropping from about sixty percent [favorability] to thirty-ninepercent, says Paul Begala, the former Clinton adviser. You look up today and Bill is in a league inhabitedonly by himself and Nelson Mandela and the Pope. Hes one of the most beloved people on the planet and anAmerican political colossus as well. Thats just astonishingand Dougs been central to that.

Now, at long last, Band was striking out alone. In 2011, he and Irish businessman Declan Kelly had launchedTeneo, a corporate advisory firm that was hosting the Essex House event. As the guests of honor arrivedBush looking trim in a royal-blue suit and lemon-yellow tie, Clinton in conservative dark graythey werewhisked upstairs for an unscheduled photo shoot with Bands friends and family, including his wife, LilyRafii, a stylish investment bankerturnedhandbag designer, and their two young children, Max and Sophie.The detour made Clinton, Bush, and Blair late for their pre-dinner obligationa photo line with no fewer
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than 60 attendees.

The main event was set for 7 p.m. sharp, and protocol decreed that the three principals must not be made towait. They were brought backstage for their entrance, and Declan Kelly took the stage. But instead ofintroducing his distinguished guests, he launched into a long-winded sales pitch. Teneo was the next big thingin executive consulting, he informed the audience. He played a promotional video about the firm. Heintroduced the heads of Teneos divisions, describing their rsums and asking each to stand in turn.Meanwhile, the onetime guardians of the special relationship were left loitering awkwardly in the wings. Itwas unnecessarily inappropriate, says one guest. It was flagrant. Bush had evidently gotten more than hehad bargained for in accepting the (paid) invitation: At one point during the evening, a guest saw him shoot aglance at his aide that plainly said, What the fuck is going on?

The entire episode was pure Doug Band. He is rarely written about, almost never quoted, and many Clintonassociates are loath to discuss him on the record. Doug is taboono one touches the guy, says one personwho has had extensive dealings with him. On the handful of occasions he has spoken openly to the media, hehas struck an impeccably humble tone. The thing I most enjoy in my job is helping people, he once told hiscollege alumni magazine. I have been able to remain behind the scenes, making a difference and changingpeoples lives. But as Band attempts to build a business of his own, the methods he once employeddiscreetly in the service of his boss have started to attract unwelcome attention.

Band himself did not respond to an extensive list of questions for this article, but over the course of ninemonths, I spoke with more than three dozen people who have worked with him over the arc of his career.Inside the realm known as Clintonland, he is the subject of considerable angst. There are those who worryabout the overlap between his work for the Clinton Global Initiative which he conceived and helped runfor six yearsand his energetic efforts to expand Teneos client base. And there are those who worry abouthow some of the messier aspects of the charitys operations could create trouble for Hillary Clinton, who hasmade the family foundation her base as she contemplates a presidential run. But the real cause for theseanxieties runs deeper. At its heart, the unease with Band reflects an unease with the phenomenon of post-presidential Clintonism itself.

Bill Clinton now leads a sprawling philanthropic empire like no other. The good it achieves is undeniable. Ithas formed partnerships with multinationals and wealthy individuals to distribute billions of dollars all overthe globe. Its many innovative projects include efforts to lower the costs of medicines in developing nationsand reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in major cities. And yet its hard to shake the sense that its not allabout saving the world. Theres an undertow of transactionalism in the glittering annual dinners, the fixationon celebrity, and a certain contingent of donors whose charitable contributions and business interests occupyan uncomfortable proximity. More than anyone else except Clinton himself, Band is responsible for creatingthis culture. And not only did he create it; he has thrived in it.

There are people who are driven to Washington by ideological passion or who come to advance a particularcause. Doug Band was not one of those people. He grew up in sunny comfort in Sarasota, Florida, theyoungest of four sons, and by all accounts, it was always important to him to be wherever the power playerswere. After rushing Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Florida, he was elected president of theinterfraternity council for the entire campus. College administrators recall a precocious student politician whoentered every meeting with a defined agenda. At the time, his close friend, David Sobelman, was puzzled byBands palpable ambition: I didnt understand what that motivation meant at that point, but obviously Dougdid.
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Band would later trace his interest in politics to a campus visit by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. But whenhe came to Washington, it was to intern for a Republican congressman, Dan Miller. In itself, this wasnt sostrange: Sarasota belonged to a staunchly Republican county in Millers district, and Bands father, a realestate developer, had supported Millers campaign. Still, Miller told me he was a little surprised whenBand returned to Washington in 1995 at the age of 22 to intern in the Clinton White House.

It wasnt long before Band knew everyone and everyone knew Band. He remembered the janitors firstnames; he joked with the women in the White House counsels office, where he was assigned. Hisecumenical sociability extended to Monica Lewinsky. Several White House staffers were already trying tosteer Clinton clear of the flirtatious intern, and Band later told Starr Report investigators that he found it alittle strange when she showed him a tie she planned to give the president. But that December, shortly afterLewinsky and Clinton began their affair, Band accepted her invitation to escort her to the White HouseCongressional Ball. Hes a nice guy, says a former colleague from the counsels office. Also, she had thetickets, and he wanted to go.

After his internship, Band was hired by the counsels office as a staffer vetting judicial nominees, whileearning a masters in liberal arts and a law degree from Georgetown. It was the perfect preparation for acomfortable life in the capitals legal circlesand so his colleagues were perplexed when Band took a job onthe presidents advance team, typically a role for someone several years younger. People felt happy for him,but one question in my mind was, as a lawyer, why would he want to do it? recalls a former supervisor at thecounsels office.

For Band, however, being in the thick of the action was more important than shaping it. The legal job was inthe Old Executive Office Building; the advance job was in the White House. He just wanted to be closer tothe president, to really be inside the West Wing and see in a closer level of visibility how things worked,says the former supervisor. By 2000, Band had moved up from the advance team to become Clintons bodyman.

Bands pursuit of this path reflected a shrewd insight into the Clinton White House. Among presidentialaides, the body man is referred to dismissively as the butt boy. But being the butt boy for Bill Clinton heldmore potential than it would for almost any other politician. Since Clinton was pathologically incapable ofshowing up on time, he needed constant management. This required, for one thing, a mastery of the politicsand the issues of the moment, and Band immersed himself in the presidents briefing book accordingly. Youhave to think about little tiny miniscule details and have to understand the broad strategic picture, explainsone former staff member. If youre trying to figure out in the moment if its OK to be late to that nextmeeting, it helps if you understand that this legislative issue takes precedence over, say, meeting thegovernors.

Then there was the delicate matter of the presidents social appetite. [Clinton] just loves being aroundpeople, says the former staff member. That would cause challenges, but it also feeds him as a human being,having those interactions. Multiple times a day, Band would have to judge whether it was more constructivefor Clinton to adhere strictly to the schedule or to linger on the rope line, clasping hands and telling stories.Band would later tell a Florida paper that his role with Clinton was being him for himto completelyinhabit his bosss needs and whims and moods.

So adept was Band at these tasks that, when Dul Hill was cast on The West Wing as Charlie Youngthecharacter who introduced the body man into popular culturehe sought Bands advice. Band briefed him onthe surreal existence of being, simultaneously, the least important guy in the room and the person who spends
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more time with the president than anyone else. You kind of forget that youre right next to the mostpowerful man in the world, Hill recalls Band explaining. Heads of states and corporations throughout theworld know you by your first name, because wherever the president is, thats where you are.

As his second term wound down, Clinton fell into a gloomy state. He was leaving the White House indisgrace over his last-minute pardons and owed millions of dollars in legal bills. Once again, Band surprisedhis colleagues by declining a job at Goldman Sachs and opting to remain as Clintons assistant. It wasnt themost glamorous time to do that job, says the former staff member. It was a loyalty play. Michael Feldman,a former adviser to Vice President Gore, detected the instincts of an entrepreneur: The connections youcultivate if you do that jobthe potential is unlimited.

In July 2001, Clinton opened an office in Harlem, on a strip of nail salons and sportswear shops. In the earlymonths, the phones were not ringing as much, says Doug Sosnik, a senior adviser to Clinton in his secondterm. A lot of the time, it was just Band and Bill, shuttling between Harlem and Clintons home inChappaqua. The former president had established the William J. Clinton Foundation, but lacked any real planfor how he would spend the years ahead. It was a tough adjustment for Clinton, but a pretty heady time forDoug, says his former colleague from the counsels office.

The young aidenow titled counselorwas still the bearer of the BlackBerry, which often ran out of juicebefore noon. But, if you were a petitioner for access to Clinton, you knew that Band had assumed the role ofgatekeeper and that Clinton increasingly trusted him to know which invitations he would want to accept. Hewas one of those guys who stayed till two oclock in the morning, worked very hard, and was impeccablyloyal. Both Clintons value those qualitiesthe loyalty, being willing to do anything, walk through the coalsfor you, says a former Clinton administration official.

This was the moment of Bands elevation from trusted aide to essential companion. In the White House, thepower had lain in the office itself. But as Clinton entered his post-presidential life, the base camp for BillClinton is where Bill Clinton is, says Sosnik. If you want to be driving the overall Clinton project, if yourenot with him, youre not where the action is. And Band was with him almost constantly. By his tally, he hasaccompanied the former president to nearly 125 countries and 2,000 cities. He was at Clintons bedside whenhe had heart bypass surgery in 2004. On the rare occasions when they werent together, they were known tospeak on the phone dozens of times a day.

Sosnik told me that there is something almost uxorial about spending so much time in Clintons presence. Ifyoure with someone eighteen or nineteen hours a day, there can be long stretches when youre laughing orplaying cards and long stretches when youre not talking at all. You get a sense of certain things. Like, thepresidents not a morning person. There were certain things you wait to deal with, certain conversations youhave at certain times of the day. A friend of Clintons who has traveled with the two men recalled a MiddleEastern trip where Band canceled a meeting with some petro-royalty because he sensed Clinton needed abreak. The president said, No, no. [Doug] said, No sir, you need to rest. ... The guy who had the meetingwasnt thrilled.

Clinton, in turn, lived vicariously through Band, goading him for tales of the bachelors life. This was not,however, a relationship of equals. During marathon card games, Clinton would sometimes muse, I used tobe the leader of the free world, says the Clinton friendin jest, but . . . kind of serious, too.

Through his boss, Band received his entre into the billionaire boys club that was Clintons post-presidentialsocial circle. The pair often traveled on the Boeing 757 of supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who had taken



Clinton on as a partner in his private-equity firm, Yucaipa, and who has estimated that he spent about 500hours a year with Clinton in this period. Another close buddy was Democratic donor and Hollywoodproducer Steve Bing. Vanity Fair would later run a suggestive piece about Clintons wilding period in theseyears, noting Burkle and Bings playboy reputations and identifying Band as enabler of the hijinks on whatBurkle staffers referred to as Air Fuck One. Sosnik, however, says Band was never part of the rat pack onthe road, adding, In my time, Doug was always on the side of taking care of business.

Band and Clinton were so inseparable that Band sometimes framed requests to colleagues using the royalus or we. Naturally, people assumed he was referring to his boss. In some part of his mind, he meldedthem into being one person, says a longtime Clinton associate. You thought that, if he said something, itwas coming from the top. ... If he called and said, We need tulips for the apartment, you assumed it was thepresident who needed tulips for his apartment. However, the associate believes that, at least in some cases,Band was presenting his own preferences as those of Clinton. For instance, he says that it was Band, notClinton, who insisted on frequenting luxury hotels and restaurants on the road. [Clinton] could stay in theMotel 6he doesnt care, hes from Arkansas! the associate says. But for Band, it has to be the Bellagio.The perception was that it was what the president wants. But the president doesnt care about that stuff. Theassociate adds: The question is, when did [Band] believe, Hey, Im an equal, and I should share the fruits ofthis?

Not everyone in Clintonland was thrilled at Bands ascent. He can come across as pretty harshlyjudgmental, says a former senior aide to Hillary Clinton. You could fill Shea Stadium with people whohavent heard from Doug, or heard something they didnt want to hear, or heard something that alienatesthem. John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff, explains: The president gets like azillion requests to do stuff, and Dougs the guy whos had to say no to nine hundred ninety-ninewhats oneless than a zillion? That rubbed some people the wrong way. Sometimes, people would try to bypass Bandand appeal to Clinton directly, but this was trickyClinton didnt use e-mail, and Band was nearly alwaysthere. Even if you did manage to reach Clinton, Band could bring him around to his view when they werealone again.

Maggie Williams, the foundations chief of staff (and Hillarys former White House chief of staff), balked atBands habit of circumventing her authority. In 2004, according to the Clinton associate, Williams, backed byHillary, informed Band that he needed to leave. But Band, backed by Bill, refused to go. In the end, it wasWilliams who left. Thats when I realized, this guy has got it figured outhes never going to go away,says the Clinton associate. (Williams now downplays the conflict, telling me: We were in a start-up. We hada lot to do, too few hours in the day to do it, not enough people to help, and sometimes we had different ideasabout how to get the work done, and it made us extremely cranky.)

It was on one of their many trips together that Band hit upon the way to lift Clinton out of the murk of theearly post-presidency. As Begala tells it, the idea came to Band at that font of grand ideas, Davos. Given thatClintons political stock was still languishing, Band was astonished with the billionaires and CEOs standingin line to talk to him, Begala says. He was rigorously assessing the presidents strengths and attributes andmaximizing them. I remember him saying, The president has a convening power, the power to bring peopletogether. Why not create an annual event that harnessed the desire of wealthy celebrities to get close toClinton to advance the aims of his foundation? Thus, in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was born.

CGI is not a traditional charityunlike Clintons foundation, it does not dispense money of its own. Instead,it is a series of collaborations with corporations or individuals to solve global problems, anchored by anannual conference that costs $20,000 to attend. In the past eight years, CGI has secured pledges worth $74
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billion. (By comparison, the Gates Foundation has given away $28 billion since its inception in 1994.) Asconceived by Band, CGI was the perfect vehicle for Clinton. It allowed him to train his intellect on wonkydilemmasimproving Chinas power grid, bolstering Malis market for locally produced rice. And it placedhim at the center of a matrix of the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-powerful, the kinds of people Clinton hasalways taken a special pleasure in surrounding himself with.

CGI operates like an economy in which celebrity is the main currency. For Clinton, there is the appeal oftackling existential challenges by striking a deal, one on one, with the right influential person. He could helpexpand access to health care for millions, thanks to the whim of a billionaire like Saudi Arabias SheikMohammed Al Amoudi; or get $30 million in loan guarantees to finance clean water utilities in India, viaDow Chemical; or $100 million for small-business development in Africa, courtesy of Shell. Clinton hasthis abiding faith that, if you get the right people in the room together, magical things will happen, saysPriscilla Phelps, who was the housing expert for the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which Clinton co-chaired. In some cases, such as securing agreements for carbon-emissions reductions, the solving-by-convening model has produced impressive results. In others, such as the Haiti commission, which held onlyseven meetings to little effect, it has not. (Phelps told me that the practicalities of what happens after thosesmart people leave the conference room and cocktail hour is not [Clintons] specialty at all.)

For corporations, attaching Clintons brand to their social investments offered a major p.r. boost. As furtherincentive, they could hope for a kind word from Clinton the next time they landed in a sticky spot. Coca-Cola or Dow or whoever would come to the president, explains a former White House colleague of Bands,and say, We need your help on this. Negotiating these relationships, and the trade-offs they required,could involve some gray areas. But for that, Clinton had Band.

As for Band, he was right where hed always wanted to be. He solicited pledges from wealthy donors anddoled out access to Clinton. He determined who got to be on stage with him and for how long, who got intothe photo line, who rode on the plane. If you look at CGI, it was an idea, and now its a huge business, saysthe Clinton friend. [Band] started realizing he had all this talent on the business side. More than that, Bandcame to see entrepreneurial opportunities embedded within CGI itself. When they were raising money forthe foundation, Doug was the one who kept the tabs and the lists and cut the deals, says the former WhiteHouse colleague. And Doug is very transactional.

From outward appearances, Band had transcended his body-man beginnings at startling speed. In 2003, hehad purchased a $2.1 million condo in the sought-after Metropolitan Tower on West 57th Street. His salaryfrom the Clinton Foundation remained relatively modest$110,000 by the time he left in 2011, plus anadditional payment from Clintons personal office. Yet his official salary didnt account for the ways inwhich he benefited financially from his singular relationship with Clinton. According to The Wall StreetJournal, Burkles Yucaipa had been supplementing Bands income for some time, paying him via a Floridacompany Band created in 2001 named SGRD, for the four Band brothers first initials. (Band laterestablished several more such partnerships.)

At first, Clinton had no problem with this sort of thing. The income from Burkle had been arranged with hisknowledge, to keep Band from pursuing more lucrative employment. The president trusted [Bands]judgment and trusted him personally, Sosnik told me. (Clinton declined to comment for this article.) Plus,Clinton was notoriously blas about financial matters. He doesnt care about money, the Clinton friend toldme. He doesnt even have a credit card. When he wants to get something he says, Wow, I love that, andwhoever hes with says, Here it is! Bands former White House colleague agrees that Clinton has neverworried a heck of a lot about that stuff. Its more about, Whos loyal, whos helping me, whos delivering
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value? and not, Are they doing really well for themselves on the side?

But there were signs that Band also sought out such opportunities independently. The longtime Clintonassociate was approached by a company interested in having the former president speak at a conference andasked Band for guidance. (Between 2001 and 2013, Clinton received $106 million in speaking fees.) Bandexplained that the company should pay a certain sum to Clintons speakers agency and ideally contribute acertain sum to CGI or the foundation. Of course, he told the associate, the company should also pay you forhaving made that happenas if that were simply the way things were done. Doug has always beenreasonably commercial, lets just say, says his former White House colleague. He was a gatekeeper whocharged tolls.

And questions were surfacing about some of the people getting through the gate. There was Londonbusinessman Victor Dahdaleh, who touted Clinton as a close friend and gave the foundation around $5million in 2010. The next year, British authorities charged him with bribing a Bahraini company, for as muchas $9.5 million. (The trial has been delayed until November.) There was Canadian businessman FrankGiustra, who often made his luxury jet available to Clinton and Band. In 2005, Giustra and Clintonoverlapped on a visit to Kazakhstan, and at a dinner, Clinton praised the countrys autocratic ruler, NursultanA. Nazarbayev. Days later, according to The New York Times, Giustra secured a huge uranium-mining deal inthe country. In early 2006, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the foundation, followed by another $100 millionpledge. (He also co-produced Clintons sixtieth birthday party in Toronto, which raised another $21million.)

The most embarrassing association of all was Raffaello Follieri. The saga of the Italian striver who duped theClintons has been unspooled by the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, The Wall Street Journal, and VanityFair. But if anything, Bands role in the affair has been understated, and it offers an illuminating study in theart of relationship leverage. Follieri descended on New York in 2003, 25 years old and exuding Continentalglamour. Soon, he started dating Anne Hathaway. He claimed that, through a Vatican connection, he hadbeen delegated to develop some of the Catholic Churchs choicest North American properties, to help thechurch pay off bills associated with its sex-abuse scandals.

In early 2005, Follieri expressed interest in writing a generous check to Clintons foundation. A meeting withBand was arranged, but somehow the conversation turned from a potential contribution by Follieri to apotential investment by Yucaipa in Follieris venture. Burkle eventually agreed to put in as much as $105million.

Follieri courted Band by playing on his taste for the high life. In Bands early days in New York, a night outmeant pizza and beer with old White House pals. Now, he was a regular at Cipriani and frequented A-listnightclubs like Bungalow 8. He wasnt much of a drinkerhe just liked being on the scene. For a while, hehad dated supermodel Naomi Campbell. (Hes never had any difficulty being able to attract quite good-looking women, says his former colleague from the White House counsels office. He just charmed her.)He had been eager to obtain American Expresss invitation-only black card for high-rollers, says one personwhos been out on the town with him, and when he finally got one, he would slap it down on the table atgroup outings. He had been known to carry cash in rolls of $100 bills. He also had a canny method of landinga table at the most exclusive spots, says the former White House colleague. He would make a reservation forPresident Clinton and then arrive with his own entourageand no Bill. The owner of one downtownrestaurant eventually barred Band from its love list for pulling this stunt one too many times. [The owner]comes and says, Fuck, Doug keeps making reservations under Clintons name, and half the time Dougshows up with his friends, says the former White House colleague. They were like, lifes too short, and
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wouldnt take his reservation anymore.

By the time Follieri arrived in town, Band was seeing Lily Rafii, who was then in mergers and acquisitions atMorgan Stanley. Follieri invited the couple to dine with him and Hathaway at Cipriani, Nobu Fifty-Seven,and Koi, and introduced them to his Euro jet set. Band was exposed to another universe, says MelanieBonvicino, a publicist who befriended Follieri and worked for him at times. The cosmetics of it worked foreverybody.

With Bands help, Follieri got meetings with, among others, Clinton himself, Burkle, and Carlos Slim, therichest man in the world, aboard Slims yacht in the Sea of Cortez. Slim declined to invest, but anotherintroduction paid off: Through another Clinton contact, Keith Stein, Band hooked Follieri up with MichaelCooper, the head of Toronto-based Dundee Realty Corporation, who kicked in $6 million.

After Cooper invested, Follieri wired $400,000 to one of Bands SGRD partnerships. Band has said that themoney was a finders fee that he split with Stein for helping make the introduction and that he only acceptedit at Follieris insistence. (Stein and Cooper declined to comment.) But March 2006 e-mails show Bandseeking the payment from Follieri in business-like fashion. The typo-filled messages also indicate thatFollieri viewed it as compensation for Bands assistance in netting an investment from Slim. On March 11,Follieri wrote Band: Tonight I have a boring dinner with the foundation of the queen of Sweden. Bandreplied: Ouch. Going to budakan at 9. Come when your done. In meatpacking district. On March 22, Bandsent a bill for consulting services for the amount of $400,000.00 to Follieris Channel Islandsbasedsubsidiary. The next day, Follieri replied: The transfer it is done, do you think I call Carlos son in law? OnMarch 28, Band wrote: My bank never received the wire. Follieris reply: I going to call our bank now,end I let you know.

At the 2006 CGI summit, Clinton announced that Follieri would fund an effort to provide Hepatitis Avaccines to 10,000 Honduran children and a $50 million commitment to provide free prescription-drug cardsto needy Americans. Neither donation was fulfilled before Follieris charade unraveled. In early 2007,Yucaipa sued him for misappropriating $1.3 million of its investment for his personal use. The money hadbeen spent on, among other things, a $37,000-per-month apartment and a $107,000 chartered jet to join theClintons at Oscar de la Rentas Dominican Republic estate. Everyone kept saying, How did he get throughto Clinton? says Don Onyschuk, the vice-chancellor of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Toronto, whichwas drawn into the Dundee deal. It was through Doug Band and the pledge made to the foundation.

Band has said that the Church vouched for Follieri, which its officials have denied. Band has also said hereturned the payment from Follieri to Cooper. But he only did so around June 2007, several months afterYucaipa filed its lawsuit and about the same time that Il Sole 2 Ore started calling. In the end, Follieri settledwith Yucaipa, but in 2008, federal prosecutors charged him with fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.He pled guilty a few months later, forfeited $2.44 million, and was sentenced to federal prison inPennsylvania. (Follieri, who was released in May, did not respond to a request to comment.)

Band emerged from the episode seemingly unscathed. As the Follieri story was emerging, he and Rafiimarried in France at the seventeenth-century Chateau of Vaux le Vicomte. Clinton, Bing, and Burkle flewinto Paris for a dazzling ceremony capped with a fireworks display. Band bashfully told The Gainesville Sunthat he had begged his boss not to come, but not only did he come, he made this incredible speech. And inFebruary 2008, Clinton praised Band to The Washington Post. Im amazed he still works for me because hecould make a lot more money somewhere else, he said. For his part, Band offered self-effacing reasons forhis years at Clintons side. You break into this kind of work by believing in the inherent value and good of
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public service, he explained to a reporter at around this time. You get out of it what you put into it.

But as Clinton hit the campaign trail to stump for Hillary in the Democratic primary, people were once againquestioning Bands judgment. More than once, he failed to prevent Clintons dyspeptic outbursts against theObama campaign. When Clinton lashed out at a reporter in Nevada, Band stood at his shoulder, his facediffident, making no attempt to move him along.

If anything, his total mind meld with Clinton was part of the problem. Both men were convinced Hillary wasflailing because she wasnt attacking Obama more aggressively. What the president needs is someone tosay, I heard you, youre right, but you should not be the one delivering that message, lets figure out whoshould be doing that, says the former White House colleague. With Doug, it was more about getting thepresident more fired up than he needed to be. Or, as the Clinton friend puts it, At the end of the day, Dougis massively loyal to the president, and doing whats best for the president is sometimes not whats best forHillary. (Sosnik defends Band, arguing that Bills behavior was his own doing: He was a little rusty.)

Band had a key ally on Hillarys team: Huma Abedin. Bills body man and Hillarys body woman hadbonded over their loyalty to their bosses. They were known to show up at parties together, which some sawas an endearing big brotherlittle sister dynamic, and which others interpreted as evidence that Abedin had acrush on Band. They also had an ingenious method of collecting intelligence on each others behalf. Abedinwould sidle up to someone in Bills camp and, in a confiding tone, make a disparaging remark about Band. Ifit was reciprocated, she would relay the criticisms to Band and he would do the same for her, says someonewho fell for this technique. They had each others back a lot, says the former White House colleague.

Still, the alliance did not prevent Hillarys campaign team from demanding that Clinton be accompanied onthe trail by a more seasoned minder. Band objected, says the former Clinton administration official. Hisvocal reason was, He doesnt need a handler, hes the best political mind, dadadadada. But the reality washe did need someone.

After the election, Bands relationship with Clinton entered a hybrid phase. He still traveled with Bill whenhe was needed: In August 2009, he accompanied Clinton to North Korea to retrieve two American womenwho had been imprisoned there. In one of the more surreal official photos of all time, Clinton and Kim Jong-il sit stiffly in front of a kitschy tsunami backdrop. Standing directly behind the diminutive North Koreandictator is Band. In another picture, he is walking between the two women across the tarmac to a waiting jet(on loan from Steve Bing), hoisting their largest duffel. The two images captured Bands role perfectly. Hewas in the innermost circle, and he was still carrying peoples bags. Sosnik told me: As he grew in the joband the job became bigger, he still did the crap work. There was no discussion of it.

And yet the signs were suggesting that it was time for Band to emerge from Clintons shadow. He wasstarting a family, and his financial arrangement with Burkle was in doubt, since Clinton had moved to end hisbusiness ties with the California billionaire in 2007. By this point, Band had been professionally submerginghis identity within Clintons for a decade. A senior Democrat in Washington observed: What Ive alwayssaid to Doug is that its vital to become your own person. Its not really healthy to be a body person, a staffer,your whole life.

So Band branched out, in more ways than one. During the campaign, he had sold his apartment in theMetropolitan Tower and purchased the Essex House condominium, for $7.1 million. In 2009, he added anadjoining eighth-floor unit, purchased for $1.7 million. The expanded apartment was painted in the vibrantcolors that Rafii loves, and a huge ego wall was installed, covered in letters and signed pictures. Around this
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time, he also decided to establish a business of his own.

Band had already shown that he could be quite brazen in invoking his Clinton ties in a personal capacity. Onestark example came in 2009, when the U.S. Postal Service exercised a purchase option on the Sarasota postoffice building, which was owned by Bands father and another family. The owners refused to sell, arguingthat the price should be higher than the $825,000 the Post Office had offered. Then, Band placed a phone callto Alan Kessler, a longtime Clinton ally and a member of the Postal Service Board of Governors. Accordingto the Postal Service inspector general and documents I obtained under a Freedom of Information request,Kessler urged top Postal Service officials to pay more for the building. Postal Service General Counsel MaryAnne Gibbons recalled to investigators that Kessler told her Band had White House connections and couldrun up to Capitol Hill and thwart the Postal Service. A colleague of Bands in Clintons post-presidentialoffice whose name was redacted from documents also contacted Gibbons, clearly signaling where theoverture was coming from: I work for President Clinton. His Counselor, Doug Band, asked that I set up acall with you ... After the inspector general found that Kessler had failed to uphold his duty to the PostalService, Kessler resigned in July 2011. Nevertheless, in order to curb its legal costs, the Postal Service settledthe sale with the two families for $1.06 million.

When Band launched Teneo, he deployed his Clinton connections on a grander scale. In 2010, he, DeclanKelly, and a third partner registered the first of several entities in Delaware that would become Teneo. Bandand Kelly had met during the 2008 campaign when Kelly was fund-raising for Hillary. Kelly had previouslyowned a p.r. firm, and the plan was for Band to offer the kind of strategic savvy hed provided to Clinton.Hes particularly useful to the CEOs, says Podesta.

Teneo has its headquarters on the forty-fifth floor of the former Citigroup Center tower in Midtown andemploys more than 200 people in 13 cities, including Dubai, Hong Kong, and So Paolo. It describes itsraison dtre as integrated counsel for a borderless world, offering investment banking, restructuringadvice, and business intelligence on dealing with global disruptors. According to its website, Teneo hasadvised on more than $525 billion of M&A transactions, served presidents and political leaders all over theglobe, and counseled the leaders of many of the largest and most complex corporations in the world.

From the beginning, Teneo resembled an outpost of Clintonland more than an independent entity. Clintonand Blair came on as paid advisers. One of the firms managing directors is the former CEO of the horse-racing and gambling empire belonging to the family of Belinda Stronach, a Canadian former politician whosefriendship with Clinton has been the subject of considerable speculation. Nancy Hernreich Bowen, director ofOval Office operations under Clinton, works in the Hong Kong office. Last year, Abedin signed on with thefirm, providing, in her own words, strategic advice and consulting services to the firms management teamas well as helping to organize a major annual firm event. (The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigatingwhether her work conflicted with her position as a paid State Department consultant.)

A number of key Teneo clients were also closely involved with Clintons charitable work. One month beforethe Rockefeller Foundation presented Clinton with an award for philanthropy, it gave Teneo a $3.4 millioncontract to propose tangible solutions to global problems. Another early client was Coca-Cola, whichhelped build the distribution system for medicine in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ghana, for a CGI project.Band has served on Coca-Colas international advisory board, and a former Coke CEO, Donald Keough,chairs the boutique investment bank Allen & Co., which holds a financial interest in Teneo. Other Teneoclients include the big hospital chain Tenet (which is a lead partner in the new Clinton Health MattersInitiative) and UBS Americas (which launched a Small Business Advisory Program with the foundation).What Doug has ended up doing, if you sort of step back and look at it, is that he has met some of the most
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influential people in the world through President Clinton and has ended up building a business dealing withand helping those people, says the Clinton friend.

Of course, it was only natural that Band would tap his existing network. What is striking is the extent towhich Teneos business model depends on his relationship with Clinton. Bands former White Housecolleague says Teneo is essentially a p.r. firm that is able to charge above-market rates because it persuadesexecutives that Band and the ties he brings are an essential service. If they were paying $25,000 or $40,000a month for p.r., then $100,000 a month, from the eyes of the CEO, ... its not going to crush him, says theformer colleague. (According to The New York Times, Teneos monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.)The longtime Clinton associate says that Bands pitch to clients was that he was able to fly around [withClinton] and decide who flies around with him. ... The whole thing is resting on his access.

A few months into Teneos existence, it began to present difficulties for the Clintons. In late 2011, it emergedthat the company had been paid $125,000 per month in consulting fees by MF Global, the brokerage firm thatlost $600 million of its investors money. There were reports that Hillary Clinton was upset about potentialconflicts between Teneos overseas clients and her work as secretary of state. In February 2012, BillClintons office announced that he would no longer take payment from the firm. The page listing anadvisory board headed by Clinton and Blair vanished from its website.

Bill Clinton was having deeper misgivings, say several people close to the situation. It was becoming difficultto ignore how aggressively Band was working his Clinton connections on Teneos behalf. Some of its biggestclients, such as Dow Chemical, were the same companies whose CEOs Band had done special favors for atCGI: getting them on stage with Clinton, relaxing the background checks for credentials, or providing slots inthe photo line. In Teneos first year, anyone on the payroll or client list got full access to CGI, plus covetedbackstage passes, according to someone closely involved in CGI. To obtain extra credentials, Band wouldmake a call and the tickets would be FedEx-ed overnight. At CGIs September 2011 summit in New York,two suites were reserved upstairs from the conference at the New York Sheraton for meetings with topdonors and heads of state. But when the Chinese ambassador was brought upstairs for a meeting, CGIofficials found both suites occupiedone by Band, one by Kelly, who were pitching potential clients. Afterthat, Teneo lost its special access.

A month later, Clinton got a firsthand taste of Teneos promotional style. He had been invited to the GlobalIrish Economic Forum in Dublin by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. Declan Kelly was also on the speakingschedule, and, according to one person with close knowledge of the event, Kellys remarks suggested that itwas Teneo that had brought Clinton to Ireland. Clinton went ashen, according to this person, and laterexploded in anger, railing that Kelly had embarrassed him in front of the prime minister. (Kelly did notrespond to a request to comment.)

At around the same time, Clinton was receiving reports of just how boldly Band had been offering hisconsulting services to major donors to CGI or the foundation, according to two people close to thefoundation. According to these people, Bands pitch left the donors with the distinct impression that Clintonhad encouraged the donors to avail themselves of Bands services. Among the people who Band may haveapproached, Clinton was told, was media mogul Haim Saban, who has donated more than $10 million to thefoundation. Through a spokesman, Saban denied that Band had made such a pitch. However, one personclose to the foundation says that Bands consulting for donors came to the fore in a 2011 audit of thefoundations finances by a New York law firm. The second person close to the foundation says that onemajor donor complained directly to Clinton that he had been writing large checks to Band and was upset thathis access to Clinton had decreased. The president was furious.
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As Bands relationship with Clinton deteriorated, he sought public ways to demonstrate that nothing hadchanged. In September 2011, the White House made overtures to secure Clintons participation in Obamasreelection campaign. The first step, it was deemed, would be a round of golf. The initial thinking in the WhiteHouse was to include Joe Biden, an old Clinton chum.

Band was involved in the planning, and he sensed an opportunity to raise his profile. According to peopleaware of the discussions, he started talking up a different arrangement: a game with the two presidents, BillDaley (Obamas thenchief of staff and a former Clinton Cabinet member) and himself. The proposal had acertain symmetrythe current president, the former president, and their top aides. Daley expressed interest,and the plan acquired its own momentum. The White House wasnt happy, but it knew that Band stillcontrolled access to Clinton. The upshot was that the vice president was bounced and Band got into theframe. (Daley told me he was unaware of any plotting to exclude Biden.) Once he got Daley on board, itwas just a matter of time before he could get to pushing out the vice president, says one person close to thenegotiations. Doug was on a separate track. The round was held, to much media fanfare, on a muggySaturday on the links at Andrews Air Force Base.

Clinton was thrilled to find that the Obama team wanted to deploy him to full advantage. Throughout thecampaign, however, Band was unwilling to let bygones be bygones. He demanded that the Obama team helppay off Hillarys 2008 campaign debt as a condition of Bills assistance. Though he had no campaignexperience, he objected to the locations that the Obama campaign wanted Clinton to visit. He insisted thatClinton spend more time in Florida (Bands home state), rather than being dispatched to, say, Minnesota. Hetussled with Obamas people about who would speak first or second in joint appearances. Bands relationswith Obama strategist David Plouffe were disastrous, says one high-ranking Democratic source. Dougmade everything harder than it needed to be, says the source. Dealing with the Clinton world always hadsomething to do with what Doug wanted. You had to go through a big process and suck up to Doug, and hehad to tell you for a long time how stupid you were.

Eventually, the source says, a couple of senior campaign officials told Clinton about the problem. Mostpeople in that role ... usually reflect [their] boss. Doug did not reflect his boss. Clinton is easy to work withand likes to get stuff done, says the source. I would be surprised if Clinton had a full assessment of howdifficult Doug was. For a while, Band was still trying to be part of things, the source adds. Eventually,though, his gatekeeper role was passed to other Clinton aides. Meanwhile, Bands reputation inside theObama campaign became outright toxic after The New Yorker reported that he planned to vote for MittRomney, which Band denied.

By the elections end, Bands standing in Clintonland had visibly declined. In January, he went off thepayroll of Clintons personal office, though not without negotiations about whether he would be allowed tokeep his valuable presidentclinton.com e-mail address. His role within CGI was also the subject of dispute.The foundation stopped paying him in 2011, but he remained on CGIs advisory board. Tensions simmeredbetween Band and Chelsea Clinton, who has assumed a more active role in what is now officially the Bill,Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Chelsea, who once felt only fondness for Band as a trusted memberof her familys circle, came to worry that the overlap between the foundation and Bands business interestscould backfire on the Clintons. Podesta, who came in to put the foundations house in order in 2011, says, ofthe grumbling about Band: There was a kind of capacity issue. You cant do everything.

Meanwhile, Hillarys adoption of the foundation as a temporary perch this year has left even less space forBand. Hillary and Chelseas view was, Look, if youre going to work for the foundation you should work forthe foundation and nothing else, says the Clinton friend. But for Doug, it was hard, because hes been
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involved in it from the beginning. It was, Yeah, come on man, I can do both. He added, I dont think[Chelsea] was wrong. In the past, no one would care what he was doing, dealing with all those people. Today,the last thing anyone wants is noise.

Bill Clinton tried to smooth things over in a March 2012 statement, writing, I couldnt have accomplishedhalf of what I have in my post presidency without Doug Band.1 (The New York Times reported that Bandhelped edit the statement.)2 Likewise, Hillarys camp has struck a conciliatory tone. While she recognizesthat after years of putting her family first, Dougs family must be his priority, she appreciates the support hecontinues to provide to the president and the Foundation, one long-term Hillary adviser wrote in an e-mail.

These days, Clinton and Band now speak only every couple of months when they run into each other atevents, such as a fund-raiser Band co-hosted for Terry McAuliffe in February. Its gone from being asurrogate son relationship to an awkward thickness when theyre in the room together, says one person withclose knowledge of the relationship who has witnessed this dynamic firsthand. Its like when your wifecheats on you, and after the divorce, you have to see them at the friends wedding or at the supermarket.Theres a strangeness to it.

This person says the two men have had tense conversations and that Clinton is deeply pained by his aidesefforts to capitalize on their relationship. Others close to Clinton have also observed a distinct chill betweenthem. As always, however, Clinton detests confrontation. Its hard for him, says the person with closeknowledge of the relationship. At some points in his career, he spent more time with Doug than he did withhis own wife. They knew everything about each other, he loved seeing Dougs family, loved the stories andthe antics. And then, to have it turn into your adoptive son has run away. ... It burns him internally, and hisway to deal with it is not to talk about it.

Of course, it is very much in Bands interest to downplay any animosity. Dougs currency is as a Clintonguy, says Bands former White House colleague. Doug has developed a network that stands on his ownthe number of people who know him around town and around Washington and around the world is pretty big.But what they think of him is as a person who knows President Clinton and is close to President Clinton.Band and Teneo now have a large payroll riding on that image.

Bands friends say he has entered a new chapter of his lifeless concerned with politics and more focused onMax and Sophie, whom he speaks about in near-reverential terms. In late June, he added more room for hisgrowing family (he and Lily are expecting their third child), purchasing another eighth-floor unit in the EssexHouse for $1.5 million. Theres good in the world that he has done, and now his family and his friends arehis real focus, says Sobelman. When we talk, its more: Hows work? Its going well. Now, lets talkfootball. Band is also teaching an occasional class at New York University where he is billed as theHonorable Doug Band; the syllabus kicks off with a Politico piece describing him as by far [Clintons]most powerful aide.

The ultimate measure of Bands place in Clintonland will come if Hillary runs for president. Some in Clintoncircles predict that Band would, for once, remain outside the action, doing no more than fund-raising. Thereare a lot of people jockeying for position and Doug is a little bit on the sidelines, says the former WhiteHouse colleague. Its good to have someone around Clinton who is a little less us against them, a littlemore were all in this together. But others believe Band would be right back at Clintons side if given thechance, despite all that has come between them. You never really leave ... because you dont want to, saysBegala. Im sure if the bell rings again, Doug will come running.
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Alec MacGillis is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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