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New Clinton official tells it like it is

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Times Staff Writer

When crisis would strike the Clinton White House, senior staff would meet at 7 a.m. in a kind of war-planning session. Sometimes an uncomfortable truth would waft silently about the room, like steam from the coffee mugs.

Leon E. Panetta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, recalls that one person in those meetings would often speak the truth when others hesitated: Maggie Williams.

“She would raise it and she would deal with it directly,” Panetta said of Williams, who was then the first lady’s top aide. “I never got the sense that she was holding back.”

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More than a decade later, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to win the Oval Office for herself, and this week she turned to her former chief of staff to reinvigorate her campaign.

The first step, Clinton supporters say, is for the new campaign manager to truthfully assess the operation’s weaknesses. And those who have worked with Williams say no one on the New York senator’s campaign staff is better suited to that role.

“People know that when Maggie says something, it’s because she believes it and she doesn’t have another agenda,” Panetta said. “In politics, that’s a very unusual set of traits.”

Williams did not start out working full time on the campaign, but after Clinton lost the Iowa caucuses, she started making calls to Clinton supporters outside the campaign to assess the trouble. Clinton won in New Hampshire but then lost traction in subsequent weeks, and pressure grew for a shake-up.

High-stakes primaries

Williams’ task now is to try to ensure that Clinton wins decisively in the high-stakes March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas, each of which has well over 100 delegates at stake.

“I don’t think she intended or expected to be part of the campaign,” said David Gergen, who worked with Williams when he served as a political advisor under President Clinton. “It’s clearly a sign of distress that they reached out and brought her in.”

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Clinton has known Williams since the early 1980s, when Clinton was on the board of the Children’s Defense Fund and Williams was the advocacy group’s communications director.

Since then, the two have developed an intense personal loyalty, but not a blind one -- Williams is known as someone who is able to tell Clinton what she doesn’t want to hear.

“She is a consigliere to Hillary and always has been,” said Lisa Caputo, who was press secretary to Clinton as first lady and who is informally advising the Clinton campaign.

Caputo said Clinton, 60, and Williams, 53, treat each other more as peers. By contrast, Clinton’s former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, while equally trusted, is 42 and had related to her boss more as an employee than as an equal.

“Maggie’s relationship goes back 25-plus years. Patti’s goes back 15,” Caputo said, adding, “Maggie has dealt longer on a national stage.”

Williams was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo. Although a Baptist, she came to Washington to attend Trinity College, a Catholic women’s college, from which she graduated in 1977.

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Along the way, she shed her given name, Margaret, becoming known universally as Maggie.

After college she worked in the press office of the Democratic National Committee and for Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) before landing the job at the Children’s Defense Fund.

At the White House, Williams was the highest-ranking African American, and she became an integral part of the Clinton inner circle. The mere fact that she attended Panetta’s high-level meetings was unprecedented. Hillary Clinton was the first presidential spouse to have an office in the West Wing, and she installed Williams next door with a dual title as “assistant to the president.”

But -- by design -- Williams was little-known outside the White House. That frustrates friends who believe she has deserved more credit and recognition.

“No matter what position she has had -- and she has had a lot of powerful jobs -- she never steps forward when the pictures are being taken,” said a close friend and former colleague who spoke on condition of anonymity because Williams asked her friends not to talk to reporters about her.

“That’s maddening to me and a lot of other people who know her.”

Williams did not respond to a request for an interview.

Passionate, persistent

Friends say her self-deprecating manner allows her to focus those around her on the task at hand and the principles at stake. She is passionate and persistent and -- rare for someone in politics -- not egocentric. And that’s one reason she inspires others.

One friend tells a story from her time at the Children’s Defense Fund when the nonprofit was trying to start a public service ad campaign to discourage teenage pregnancy. Williams tried to persuade a cutting-edge advertising firm to work for free.

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She got “no” for an answer, but continued to phone the Minneapolis firm’s director for months. Eventually, he told her he would be in Washington -- for 15 minutes to change planes -- and would see her then. Williams met him at the airport, made her pitch and sealed the deal. The firm worked pro bono for the organization for the next five years, until Williams left.

One time that Williams was forced into public was as a witness during congressional hearings into the Clintons’ Whitewater real estate venture. In front of TV cameras, she was riddled with questions about whether she had hidden documents from the office of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster after he committed suicide. She was also implicated in a scandal over President Clinton’s fundraising practices.

Williams was not charged with wrongdoing in either case, but she was left with $350,000 in legal bills. Newly married, she followed her husband to Paris for a few years to earn the money to pay her bills and let her psychological scars heal.

She returned to the United States after the Clintons left the White House, serving as chief of staff to Bill Clinton when he set up his foundation in New York. More recently, Williams has worked in public relations, as president of Fenton Communications, and made a study of how to structure and manage nonprofit groups.

A problem-solver

In 2005, she started a management consulting company with Patrick Griffin, an old friend from her White House days. She has been a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and currently serves on the board of its Institute of Politics.

“Her strong point is helping people with internal organizational problems, often operating in political environments,” said Griffin, who served as director of legislative affairs in the Clinton administration.

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Griffin expresses impatience with those who wonder why Hillary Clinton has turned to Williams now, with her campaign struggling and her presidential ambitions hanging in the balance. The real question, he said, is: Why would the senator call anyone else?

“She ran her office as first lady. She ran President Clinton’s foundation. I don’t think it’s a big reach,” he said.

Williams has taken a leave of absence from Griffin-Williams Critical Point Management, the firm she runs with Griffin. No one is saying how long she will run the campaign.

But her return has already made a difference. Said Caputo: “Morale is up.”

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maura.reynolds@latimes.com

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