Tracking the Clinton ‘Retirees’

If you want to catch a glimpse of the formerly famous in Washington, you don’t have to go on a house tour. You can just stand out on K Street, the main thoroughfare of the city’s ugly, sterile office district.

On any given weekday, you may see Robert S. McNamara, once the prosecutor of the Vietnam War, trudging by. Or former CIA Director Richard Helms, or ex-National Security Advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft or Robert C. McFarlane.

Once, such men commanded movements of infantry divisions and satellites. Once, they talked into scrambler phones, rode in chauffeured limousines, flew on Air Force jets, walked with a phalanx of escorts.

Now they are alone. They are in private life. And, very soon, they will be joined by a new crowd--the alumni of the Clinton administration.

This is the essence of the transition we now are witnessing. The once-mighty lose their power and their perks. Is that sad? Tragic? Hardly. It’s what gives vitality to the American system and prevents it from developing the sclerosis that afflicts China’s Communist Party or Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party or, until recently, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party.

“It’s good for people to get thrown out periodically,” says Peter Rodman, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. “You get tired after a while.”

All fine, except for one chronic problem: Those who are losing their government posts have to make a living, and their need creates the potential for conflicts of interest.

Some ex-officials will teach. Some will work for think tanks or nonprofit agencies. But some may try to profit from their government experience. They may seek to help private companies do business with the leaders of foreign nations they got to know as U.S. officials. Or they may try to lobby the U.S. government for which they once worked.

Now, as a result of a little-noticed action by President Clinton two weeks ago, the ex-officials from his and future administrations will have an easier time making a buck than they would have had otherwise.

The president signed an executive order that cuts back from five years to one year the length of time in which a retiring senior-level U.S. official is barred from lobbying the government agency or institution where he or she used to work.

The five-year limit had been imposed by Clinton himself, toughening the previous rules. It was his first official action as president, signed on Jan. 20, 1993, even before his inaugural parade was finished.

The policy had been unveiled a month earlier. Warren Christopher, then Clinton’s transition director, said the aim was to “cleanse the government process and ensure that you would not have the kind of vices of the past.”

Back then, Clinton’s policy was front-page news. But two weeks ago, when he rescinded his own rules just before they might have applied to hundreds of retiring officials from his own administration, the news was buried. Inevitably, we pay too much attention to a new administration and too little to the outgoing one.

Why do we need conflict-of-interest rules? Above all because they help to keep separate what’s the public business and what’s private.

Without such rules, government officials may be tempted to make decisions in a way that will benefit or please future employers, and retired officials may try to put the arm on the government agencies they just left. Without such rules, the public’s confidence in the integrity of government is undermined.

Tough conflict-of-interest rules like the five-year ban may deter a few people from taking government jobs in the first place. But as Christopher said in 1992, that defect is far outweighed by the obvious benefits.

We have seen too many cases in which top U.S. government officials, particularly those involved in foreign policy, put their knowledge and overseas friendships to work for private interests.

The most famous example is former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who after leaving office operated as what biographer Walter Isaacson called a “diplomat for hire.”

A few years ago, Kissinger seemed to question the qualifications of Clinton’s national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, a lawyer who specialized in trade issues before 1993. “I like him,” Kissinger told the New York Times, “but you can’t blame a trade lawyer for not being a global strategist.”

Berger said recently he doesn’t know what he’ll do after leaving the Clinton White House later this month. But let’s suppose he goes to work as a professor, or in some other job that doesn’t make use of his government contacts for profit.

If that should happen, it might be fair to conclude that, at least in their years after leaving government, Kissinger, not Berger, will have displayed the mind of a trade lawyer.

We need strict conflict-of-interest rules. It’s unfortunate that Clinton has eased them. Yet the rules themselves can’t solve everything. We also have to hope that U.S. officials, once they leave office, will find decent work that doesn’t make it appear as though they have cashed in on their public service.