White House Defends Its Efforts to Halt Ex-Officials’ Lobbying

The White House Tuesday defended the Administration’s efforts to close the “revolving door” between high government posts and lucrative lobbying jobs, as controversy arose over the plans of two high-level aides to leave government for lobbying organizations.

Howard Paster, White House director of congressional relations, plans to return to his former post as Washington head of the Hill & Knowlton public relations and lobbying firm. Roy M. Neel, deputy White House chief of staff and a man with broad ties to communications policy-makers, will head the U.S. Telephone Assn., the lobbying operation for the regional and local telephone companies.

Critics have pointed to these departures as signs that the Administration, despite pledges to change past practices, has had little more success than its predecessors.

But White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said that President Clinton “has done what he can” by tightening ethics rules regarding former officials with an executive order issued just after he took office. And she said that, in any case, the two men would be executives and not be personally engaged in lobbying.

The Clinton executive order--which stemmed from a campaign promise to reduce the influence of special interest groups--bars departing senior White House officials from lobbying anyone in the White House for five years and prohibits them from representing a foreign government for life.

Before Clinton took office, existing law barred senior Administration officials from business contacts with executive branch officials for a year.

Nothing prevents the two men from lobbying Congress, however.

Pam Gilbert, director of Congress Watch, a division of the consumer group Public Citizen, said that she has no reason to suspect either man would lobby their former colleagues. But by taking their posts “they will be violating the spirit of that order and going against the theme of the Clinton presidency, to end business as usual in Washington,” she said.

Phil Lader, 46, a friend of Clinton’s, will replace Neel as Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty’s top deputy, the White House said.