Scandal at Clinton Inc.

- The New Republic

9/23/13 1:20 AM

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, George
W. Bush, and Tony Blair met in New York to conduct what
was supposed to be a high-minded discourse on terrorism,
geopolitics, and the global economy. The setting was elegant
the beaux arts ballroom of the Essex House, an iconic
tower on Central Park South. The 78-person VIP guest list
included Harvey Weinstein, Eli Broad, Blackstone cophoto credit:
founders Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, Silicon
Valley impresario Sean Parker, Billie Jean King, George
Pataki, and New York City police chief Ray Kelly, along with CEOs and top executives from companies like
Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, BP, and Bank of America. Somehow, these onetime world leaders, corporate
titans, and other notable personages converged in the center of New York without the event ever being
noticed by the press.
The guests had been wrangled, persuaded, flattered, and otherwise enticed to attend by Doug Band, a tall man
with genial, unmemorable features and a deferential demeanor. In fact, the gathering was taking place in his
own 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 Washington
archetypes: the body man. He was the all-purpose aide who carried the bags, provided the pen, watched the
clock, kept the cigars close, and ensured the Diet Cokes were always chilled. And after the inglorious end of
Clintons presidency, Band had stayed on. It was he who had engineered Clintons transformation into a
philanthropist-king, and over the years, the pair had formed a bond that was more like father and son than
boss and factotum. The most important thing about Doug is that he sort of took control of President
Clintons career at a moment when he was dropping from about sixty percent [favorability] to thirty-nine
percent, says Paul Begala, the former Clinton adviser. You look up today and Bill is in a league inhabited
only by himself and Nelson Mandela and the Pope. Hes one of the most beloved people on the planet and an
American 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 launched
Teneo, a corporate advisory firm that was hosting the Essex House event. As the guests of honor arrived
Bush looking trim in a royal-blue suit and lemon-yellow tie, Clinton in conservative dark graythey were
whisked upstairs for an unscheduled photo shoot with Bands friends and family, including his wife, Lily
Rafii, 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 to
wait. They were brought backstage for their entrance, and Declan Kelly took the stage. But instead of
introducing his distinguished guests, he launched into a long-winded sales pitch. Teneo was the next big thing
in executive consulting, he informed the audience. He played a promotional video about the firm. He
introduced 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. It
was unnecessarily inappropriate, says one guest. It was flagrant. Bush had evidently gotten more than he
had bargained for in accepting the (paid) invitation: At one point during the evening, a guest saw him shoot a
glance 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 Clinton
associates are loath to discuss him on the record. Doug is taboono one touches the guy, says one person
who has had extensive dealings with him. On the handful of occasions he has spoken openly to the media, he
has struck an impeccably humble tone. The thing I most enjoy in my job is helping people, he once told his
college alumni magazine. I have been able to remain behind the scenes, making a difference and changing
peoples lives. But as Band attempts to build a business of his own, the methods he once employed
discreetly 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 nine
months, 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 worry
about the overlap between his work for the Clinton Global Initiative which he conceived and helped run
for six yearsand his energetic efforts to expand Teneos client base. And there are those who worry about
how some of the messier aspects of the charitys operations could create trouble for Hillary Clinton, who has
made the family foundation her base as she contemplates a presidential run. But the real cause for these
anxieties runs deeper. At its heart, the unease with Band reflects an unease with the phenomenon of postpresidential Clintonism itself.
Bill Clinton now leads a sprawling philanthropic empire like no other. The good it achieves is undeniable. It
has formed partnerships with multinationals and wealthy individuals to distribute billions of dollars all over
the globe. Its many innovative projects include efforts to lower the costs of medicines in developing nations
and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in major cities. And yet its hard to shake the sense that its not all
about saving the world. Theres an undertow of transactionalism in the glittering annual dinners, the fixation
on celebrity, and a certain contingent of donors whose charitable contributions and business interests occupy
an uncomfortable proximity. More than anyone else except Clinton himself, Band is responsible for creating
this 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 particular
cause. Doug Band was not one of those people. He grew up in sunny comfort in Sarasota, Florida, the
youngest of four sons, and by all accounts, it was always important to him to be wherever the power players
were. After rushing Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Florida, he was elected president of the
interfraternity council for the entire campus. College administrators recall a precocious student politician who
entered every meeting with a defined agenda. At the time, his close friend, David Sobelman, was puzzled by
Bands palpable ambition: I didnt understand what that motivation meant at that point, but obviously Doug
did.
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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 when
he came to Washington, it was to intern for a Republican congressman, Dan Miller. In itself, this wasnt so
strange: Sarasota belonged to a staunchly Republican county in Millers district, and Bands father, a real
estate developer, had supported Millers campaign. Still, Miller told me he was a little surprised when
Band 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 first
names; he joked with the women in the White House counsels office, where he was assigned. His
ecumenical sociability extended to Monica Lewinsky. Several White House staffers were already trying to
steer Clinton clear of the flirtatious intern, and Band later told Starr Report investigators that he found it a
little strange when she showed him a tie she planned to give the president. But that December, shortly after
Lewinsky and Clinton began their affair, Band accepted her invitation to escort her to the White House
Congressional Ball. Hes a nice guy, says a former colleague from the counsels office. Also, she had the
tickets, and he wanted to go.
After his internship, Band was hired by the counsels office as a staffer vetting judicial nominees, while
earning a masters in liberal arts and a law degree from Georgetown. It was the perfect preparation for a
comfortable life in the capitals legal circlesand so his colleagues were perplexed when Band took a job on
the 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 the
counsels office.
For Band, however, being in the thick of the action was more important than shaping it. The legal job was in
the Old Executive Office Building; the advance job was in the White House. He just wanted to be closer to
the 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 body
man.
Bands pursuit of this path reflected a shrewd insight into the Clinton White House. Among presidential
aides, the body man is referred to dismissively as the butt boy. But being the butt boy for Bill Clinton held
more potential than it would for almost any other politician. Since Clinton was pathologically incapable of
showing up on time, he needed constant management. This required, for one thing, a mastery of the politics
and the issues of the moment, and Band immersed himself in the presidents briefing book accordingly. You
have to think about little tiny miniscule details and have to understand the broad strategic picture, explains
one former staff member. If youre trying to figure out in the moment if its OK to be late to that next
meeting, it helps if you understand that this legislative issue takes precedence over, say, meeting the
governors.
Then there was the delicate matter of the presidents social appetite. [Clinton] just loves being around
people, 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 constructive
for 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 completely
inhabit 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 Youngthe
character who introduced the body man into popular culturehe sought Bands advice. Band briefed him on
the 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 most
powerful man in the world, Hill recalls Band explaining. Heads of states and corporations throughout the
world 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 in
disgrace over his last-minute pardons and owed millions of dollars in legal bills. Once again, Band surprised
his colleagues by declining a job at Goldman Sachs and opting to remain as Clintons assistant. It wasnt the
most 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 you
cultivate 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 early
months, the phones were not ringing as much, says Doug Sosnik, a senior adviser to Clinton in his second
term. A lot of the time, it was just Band and Bill, shuttling between Harlem and Clintons home in
Chappaqua. The former president had established the William J. Clinton Foundation, but lacked any real plan
for how he would spend the years ahead. It was a tough adjustment for Clinton, but a pretty heady time for
Doug, says his former colleague from the counsels office.
The young aidenow titled counselorwas still the bearer of the BlackBerry, which often ran out of juice
before noon. But, if you were a petitioner for access to Clinton, you knew that Band had assumed the role of
gatekeeper and that Clinton increasingly trusted him to know which invitations he would want to accept. He
was one of those guys who stayed till two oclock in the morning, worked very hard, and was impeccably
loyal. Both Clintons value those qualitiesthe loyalty, being willing to do anything, walk through the coals
for you, says a former Clinton administration official.
This was the moment of Bands elevation from trusted aide to essential companion. In the White House, the
power had lain in the office itself. But as Clinton entered his post-presidential life, the base camp for Bill
Clinton is where Bill Clinton is, says Sosnik. If you want to be driving the overall Clinton project, if youre
not with him, youre not where the action is. And Band was with him almost constantly. By his tally, he has
accompanied the former president to nearly 125 countries and 2,000 cities. He was at Clintons bedside when
he had heart bypass surgery in 2004. On the rare occasions when they werent together, they were known to
speak 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. If
youre with someone eighteen or nineteen hours a day, there can be long stretches when youre laughing or
playing cards and long stretches when youre not talking at all. You get a sense of certain things. Like, the
presidents not a morning person. There were certain things you wait to deal with, certain conversations you
have at certain times of the day. A friend of Clintons who has traveled with the two men recalled a Middle
Eastern trip where Band canceled a meeting with some petro-royalty because he sensed Clinton needed a
break. The president said, No, no. [Doug] said, No sir, you need to rest. ... The guy who had the meeting
wasnt 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 to
be 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-presidential
social circle. The pair often traveled on the Boeing 757 of supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who had taken
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Clinton on as a partner in his private-equity firm, Yucaipa, and who has estimated that he spent about 500
hours a year with Clinton in this period. Another close buddy was Democratic donor and Hollywood
producer Steve Bing. Vanity Fair would later run a suggestive piece about Clintons wilding period in these
years, noting Burkle and Bings playboy reputations and identifying Band as enabler of the hijinks on what
Burkle staffers referred to as Air Fuck One. Sosnik, however, says Band was never part of the rat pack on
the 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 royal
us or we. Naturally, people assumed he was referring to his boss. In some part of his mind, he melded
them into being one person, says a longtime Clinton associate. You thought that, if he said something, it
was coming from the top. ... If he called and said, We need tulips for the apartment, you assumed it was the
president 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, not
Clinton, who insisted on frequenting luxury hotels and restaurants on the road. [Clinton] could stay in the
Motel 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. The
associate adds: The question is, when did [Band] believe, Hey, Im an equal, and I should share the fruits of
this?
Not everyone in Clintonland was thrilled at Bands ascent. He can come across as pretty harshly
judgmental, says a former senior aide to Hillary Clinton. You could fill Shea Stadium with people who
havent heard from Doug, or heard something they didnt want to hear, or heard something that alienates
them. John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff, explains: The president gets like a
zillion requests to do stuff, and Dougs the guy whos had to say no to nine hundred ninety-ninewhats one
less than a zillion? That rubbed some people the wrong way. Sometimes, people would try to bypass Band
and appeal to Clinton directly, but this was trickyClinton didnt use e-mail, and Band was nearly always
there. Even if you did manage to reach Clinton, Band could bring him around to his view when they were
alone again.
Maggie Williams, the foundations chief of staff (and Hillarys former White House chief of staff), balked at
Bands habit of circumventing her authority. In 2004, according to the Clinton associate, Williams, backed by
Hillary, informed Band that he needed to leave. But Band, backed by Bill, refused to go. In the end, it was
Williams 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 had
a lot to do, too few hours in the day to do it, not enough people to help, and sometimes we had different ideas
about 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 the
early post-presidency. As Begala tells it, the idea came to Band at that font of grand ideas, Davos. Given that
Clintons political stock was still languishing, Band was astonished with the billionaires and CEOs standing
in line to talk to him, Begala says. He was rigorously assessing the presidents strengths and attributes and
maximizing them. I remember him saying, The president has a convening power, the power to bring people
together. Why not create an annual event that harnessed the desire of wealthy celebrities to get close to
Clinton 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 an
annual 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.) As
conceived by Band, CGI was the perfect vehicle for Clinton. It allowed him to train his intellect on wonky
dilemmasimproving Chinas power grid, bolstering Malis market for locally produced rice. And it placed
him at the center of a matrix of the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-powerful, the kinds of people Clinton has
always 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 of
tackling existential challenges by striking a deal, one on one, with the right influential person. He could help
expand access to health care for millions, thanks to the whim of a billionaire like Saudi Arabias Sheik
Mohammed Al Amoudi; or get $30 million in loan guarantees to finance clean water utilities in India, via
Dow Chemical; or $100 million for small-business development in Africa, courtesy of Shell. Clinton has
this abiding faith that, if you get the right people in the room together, magical things will happen, says
Priscilla Phelps, who was the housing expert for the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which Clinton cochaired. In some cases, such as securing agreements for carbon-emissions reductions, the solving-byconvening model has produced impressive results. In others, such as the Haiti commission, which held only
seven meetings to little effect, it has not. (Phelps told me that the practicalities of what happens after those
smart 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 further
incentive, they could hope for a kind word from Clinton the next time they landed in a sticky spot. CocaCola 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 and
doled out access to Clinton. He determined who got to be on stage with him and for how long, who got into
the photo line, who rode on the plane. If you look at CGI, it was an idea, and now its a huge business, says
the Clinton friend. [Band] started realizing he had all this talent on the business side. More than that, Band
came to see entrepreneurial opportunities embedded within CGI itself. When they were raising money for
the foundation, Doug was the one who kept the tabs and the lists and cut the deals, says the former White
House colleague. And Doug is very transactional.
From outward appearances, Band had transcended his body-man beginnings at startling speed. In 2003, he
had purchased a $2.1 million condo in the sought-after Metropolitan Tower on West 57th Street. His salary
from the Clinton Foundation remained relatively modest$110,000 by the time he left in 2011, plus an
additional payment from Clintons personal office. Yet his official salary didnt account for the ways in
which he benefited financially from his singular relationship with Clinton. According to The Wall Street
Journal, Burkles Yucaipa had been supplementing Bands income for some time, paying him via a Florida
company Band created in 2001 named SGRD, for the four Band brothers first initials. (Band later
established several more such partnerships.)
At first, Clinton had no problem with this sort of thing. The income from Burkle had been arranged with his
knowledge, 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 told
me. He doesnt even have a credit card. When he wants to get something he says, Wow, I love that, and
whoever hes with says, Here it is! Bands former White House colleague agrees that Clinton has never
worried 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 Clinton
associate was approached by a company interested in having the former president speak at a conference and
asked Band for guidance. (Between 2001 and 2013, Clinton received $106 million in speaking fees.) Band
explained that the company should pay a certain sum to Clintons speakers agency and ideally contribute a
certain sum to CGI or the foundation. Of course, he told the associate, the company should also pay you for
having made that happenas if that were simply the way things were done. Doug has always been
reasonably commercial, lets just say, says his former White House colleague. He was a gatekeeper who
charged tolls.
And questions were surfacing about some of the people getting through the gate. There was London
businessman Victor Dahdaleh, who touted Clinton as a close friend and gave the foundation around $5
million in 2010. The next year, British authorities charged him with bribing a Bahraini company, for as much
as $9.5 million. (The trial has been delayed until November.) There was Canadian businessman Frank
Giustra, who often made his luxury jet available to Clinton and Band. In 2005, Giustra and Clinton
overlapped on a visit to Kazakhstan, and at a dinner, Clinton praised the countrys autocratic ruler, Nursultan
A. Nazarbayev. Days later, according to The New York Times, Giustra secured a huge uranium-mining deal in
the country. In early 2006, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the foundation, followed by another $100 million
pledge. (He also co-produced Clintons sixtieth birthday party in Toronto, which raised another $21
million.)
The most embarrassing association of all was Raffaello Follieri. The saga of the Italian striver who duped the
Clintons has been unspooled by the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity
Fair. But if anything, Bands role in the affair has been understated, and it offers an illuminating study in the
art of relationship leverage. Follieri descended on New York in 2003, 25 years old and exuding Continental
glamour. Soon, he started dating Anne Hathaway. He claimed that, through a Vatican connection, he had
been delegated to develop some of the Catholic Churchs choicest North American properties, to help the
church 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 with
Band was arranged, but somehow the conversation turned from a potential contribution by Follieri to a
potential investment by Yucaipa in Follieris venture. Burkle eventually agreed to put in as much as $105
million.
Follieri courted Band by playing on his taste for the high life. In Bands early days in New York, a night out
meant pizza and beer with old White House pals. Now, he was a regular at Cipriani and frequented A-list
nightclubs like Bungalow 8. He wasnt much of a drinkerhe just liked being on the scene. For a while, he
had dated supermodel Naomi Campbell. (Hes never had any difficulty being able to attract quite goodlooking 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 person
whos been out on the town with him, and when he finally got one, he would slap it down on the table at
group outings. He had been known to carry cash in rolls of $100 bills. He also had a canny method of landing
a table at the most exclusive spots, says the former White House colleague. He would make a reservation for
President Clinton and then arrive with his own entourageand no Bill. The owner of one downtown
restaurant 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 Doug
shows 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 at
Morgan 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 Melanie
Bonvicino, a publicist who befriended Follieri and worked for him at times. The cosmetics of it worked for
everybody.
With Bands help, Follieri got meetings with, among others, Clinton himself, Burkle, and Carlos Slim, the
richest man in the world, aboard Slims yacht in the Sea of Cortez. Slim declined to invest, but another
introduction paid off: Through another Clinton contact, Keith Stein, Band hooked Follieri up with Michael
Cooper, 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 the
money was a finders fee that he split with Stein for helping make the introduction and that he only accepted
it at Follieris insistence. (Stein and Cooper declined to comment.) But March 2006 e-mails show Band
seeking the payment from Follieri in business-like fashion. The typo-filled messages also indicate that
Follieri 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. Band
replied: Ouch. Going to budakan at 9. Come when your done. In meatpacking district. On March 22, Band
sent a bill for consulting services for the amount of $400,000.00 to Follieris Channel Islandsbased
subsidiary. The next day, Follieri replied: The transfer it is done, do you think I call Carlos son in law? On
March 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 A
vaccines to 10,000 Honduran children and a $50 million commitment to provide free prescription-drug cards
to 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 had
been spent on, among other things, a $37,000-per-month apartment and a $107,000 chartered jet to join the
Clintons at Oscar de la Rentas Dominican Republic estate. Everyone kept saying, How did he get through
to Clinton? says Don Onyschuk, the vice-chancellor of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Toronto, which
was 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 he
returned the payment from Follieri to Cooper. But he only did so around June 2007, several months after
Yucaipa filed its lawsuit and about the same time that Il Sole 2 Ore started calling. In the end, Follieri settled
with 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 in
Pennsylvania. (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 Rafii
married in France at the seventeenth-century Chateau of Vaux le Vicomte. Clinton, Bing, and Burkle flew
into Paris for a dazzling ceremony capped with a fireworks display. Band bashfully told The Gainesville Sun
that he had begged his boss not to come, but not only did he come, he made this incredible speech. And in
February 2008, Clinton praised Band to The Washington Post. Im amazed he still works for me because he
could make a lot more money somewhere else, he said. For his part, Band offered self-effacing reasons for
his 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 again
questioning Bands judgment. More than once, he failed to prevent Clintons dyspeptic outbursts against the
Obama campaign. When Clinton lashed out at a reporter in Nevada, Band stood at his shoulder, his face
diffident, 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 was
flailing because she wasnt attacking Obama more aggressively. What the president needs is someone to
say, I heard you, youre right, but you should not be the one delivering that message, lets figure out who
should be doing that, says the former White House colleague. With Doug, it was more about getting the
president more fired up than he needed to be. Or, as the Clinton friend puts it, At the end of the day, Doug
is massively loyal to the president, and doing whats best for the president is sometimes not whats best for
Hillary. (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 had
bonded over their loyalty to their bosses. They were known to show up at parties together, which some saw
as an endearing big brotherlittle sister dynamic, and which others interpreted as evidence that Abedin had a
crush on Band. They also had an ingenious method of collecting intelligence on each others behalf. Abedin
would sidle up to someone in Bills camp and, in a confiding tone, make a disparaging remark about Band. If
it was reciprocated, she would relay the criticisms to Band and he would do the same for her, says someone
who 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 on
the trail by a more seasoned minder. Band objected, says the former Clinton administration official. His
vocal reason was, He doesnt need a handler, hes the best political mind, dadadadada. But the reality was
he did need someone.
After the election, Bands relationship with Clinton entered a hybrid phase. He still traveled with Bill when
he was needed: In August 2009, he accompanied Clinton to North Korea to retrieve two American women
who had been imprisoned there. In one of the more surreal official photos of all time, Clinton and Kim Jongil sit stiffly in front of a kitschy tsunami backdrop. Standing directly behind the diminutive North Korean
dictator 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. He
was in the innermost circle, and he was still carrying peoples bags. Sosnik told me: As he grew in the job
and 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 was
starting a family, and his financial arrangement with Burkle was in doubt, since Clinton had moved to end his
business ties with the California billionaire in 2007. By this point, Band had been professionally submerging
his identity within Clintons for a decade. A senior Democrat in Washington observed: What Ive always
said 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 the
Metropolitan Tower and purchased the Essex House condominium, for $7.1 million. In 2009, he added an
adjoining eighth-floor unit, purchased for $1.7 million. The expanded apartment was painted in the vibrant
colors 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. One
stark example came in 2009, when the U.S. Postal Service exercised a purchase option on the Sarasota post
office building, which was owned by Bands father and another family. The owners refused to sell, arguing
that the price should be higher than the $825,000 the Post Office had offered. Then, Band placed a phone call
to Alan Kessler, a longtime Clinton ally and a member of the Postal Service Board of Governors. According
to 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 Mary
Anne Gibbons recalled to investigators that Kessler told her Band had White House connections and could
run up to Capitol Hill and thwart the Postal Service. A colleague of Bands in Clintons post-presidential
office whose name was redacted from documents also contacted Gibbons, clearly signaling where the
overture was coming from: I work for President Clinton. His Counselor, Doug Band, asked that I set up a
call with you ... After the inspector general found that Kessler had failed to uphold his duty to the Postal
Service, Kessler resigned in July 2011. Nevertheless, in order to curb its legal costs, the Postal Service settled
the 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, Declan
Kelly, and a third partner registered the first of several entities in Delaware that would become Teneo. Band
and Kelly had met during the 2008 campaign when Kelly was fund-raising for Hillary. Kelly had previously
owned 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 and
employs more than 200 people in 13 cities, including Dubai, Hong Kong, and So Paolo. It describes its
raison dtre as integrated counsel for a borderless world, offering investment banking, restructuring
advice, and business intelligence on dealing with global disruptors. According to its website, Teneo has
advised on more than $525 billion of M&A transactions, served presidents and political leaders all over the
globe, 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. Clinton
and Blair came on as paid advisers. One of the firms managing directors is the former CEO of the horseracing and gambling empire belonging to the family of Belinda Stronach, a Canadian former politician whose
friendship with Clinton has been the subject of considerable speculation. Nancy Hernreich Bowen, director of
Oval Office operations under Clinton, works in the Hong Kong office. Last year, Abedin signed on with the
firm, providing, in her own words, strategic advice and consulting services to the firms management team
as well as helping to organize a major annual firm event. (The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating
whether 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 before
the Rockefeller Foundation presented Clinton with an award for philanthropy, it gave Teneo a $3.4 million
contract to propose tangible solutions to global problems. Another early client was Coca-Cola, which
helped 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 Teneo
clients include the big hospital chain Tenet (which is a lead partner in the new Clinton Health Matters
Initiative) 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 with
and 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 to
which Teneos business model depends on his relationship with Clinton. Bands former White House
colleague says Teneo is essentially a p.r. firm that is able to charge above-market rates because it persuades
executives that Band and the ties he brings are an essential service. If they were paying $25,000 or $40,000
a month for p.r., then $100,000 a month, from the eyes of the CEO, ... its not going to crush him, says the
former 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 [with
Clinton] 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 emerged
that the company had been paid $125,000 per month in consulting fees by MF Global, the brokerage firm that
lost $600 million of its investors money. There were reports that Hillary Clinton was upset about potential
conflicts between Teneos overseas clients and her work as secretary of state. In February 2012, Bill
Clintons office announced that he would no longer take payment from the firm. The page listing an
advisory 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 difficult
to ignore how aggressively Band was working his Clinton connections on Teneos behalf. Some of its biggest
clients, such as Dow Chemical, were the same companies whose CEOs Band had done special favors for at
CGI: getting them on stage with Clinton, relaxing the background checks for credentials, or providing slots in
the photo line. In Teneos first year, anyone on the payroll or client list got full access to CGI, plus coveted
backstage passes, according to someone closely involved in CGI. To obtain extra credentials, Band would
make 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 top
donors and heads of state. But when the Chinese ambassador was brought upstairs for a meeting, CGI
officials found both suites occupiedone by Band, one by Kelly, who were pitching potential clients. After
that, Teneo lost its special access.
A month later, Clinton got a firsthand taste of Teneos promotional style. He had been invited to the Global
Irish Economic Forum in Dublin by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. Declan Kelly was also on the speaking
schedule, and, according to one person with close knowledge of the event, Kellys remarks suggested that it
was Teneo that had brought Clinton to Ireland. Clinton went ashen, according to this person, and later
exploded in anger, railing that Kelly had embarrassed him in front of the prime minister. (Kelly did not
respond to a request to comment.)
At around the same time, Clinton was receiving reports of just how boldly Band had been offering his
consulting services to major donors to CGI or the foundation, according to two people close to the
foundation. According to these people, Bands pitch left the donors with the distinct impression that Clinton
had encouraged the donors to avail themselves of Bands services. Among the people who Band may have
approached, Clinton was told, was media mogul Haim Saban, who has donated more than $10 million to the
foundation. Through a spokesman, Saban denied that Band had made such a pitch. However, one person
close to the foundation says that Bands consulting for donors came to the fore in a 2011 audit of the
foundations finances by a New York law firm. The second person close to the foundation says that one
major donor complained directly to Clinton that he had been writing large checks to Band and was upset that
his 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 had
changed. In September 2011, the White House made overtures to secure Clintons participation in Obamas
reelection campaign. The first step, it was deemed, would be a round of golf. The initial thinking in the White
House 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 people
aware of the discussions, he started talking up a different arrangement: a game with the two presidents, Bill
Daley (Obamas thenchief of staff and a former Clinton Cabinet member) and himself. The proposal had a
certain 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 still
controlled access to Clinton. The upshot was that the vice president was bounced and Band got into the
frame. (Daley told me he was unaware of any plotting to exclude Biden.) Once he got Daley on board, it
was just a matter of time before he could get to pushing out the vice president, says one person close to the
negotiations. Doug was on a separate track. The round was held, to much media fanfare, on a muggy
Saturday 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 the
campaign, however, Band was unwilling to let bygones be bygones. He demanded that the Obama team help
pay off Hillarys 2008 campaign debt as a condition of Bills assistance. Though he had no campaign
experience, he objected to the locations that the Obama campaign wanted Clinton to visit. He insisted that
Clinton spend more time in Florida (Bands home state), rather than being dispatched to, say, Minnesota. He
tussled with Obamas people about who would speak first or second in joint appearances. Bands relations
with Obama strategist David Plouffe were disastrous, says one high-ranking Democratic source. Doug
made everything harder than it needed to be, says the source. Dealing with the Clinton world always had
something to do with what Doug wanted. You had to go through a big process and suck up to Doug, and he
had 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. Most
people in that role ... usually reflect [their] boss. Doug did not reflect his boss. Clinton is easy to work with
and likes to get stuff done, says the source. I would be surprised if Clinton had a full assessment of how
difficult 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 the
Obama campaign became outright toxic after The New Yorker reported that he planned to vote for Mitt
Romney, which Band denied.
By the elections end, Bands standing in Clintonland had visibly declined. In January, he went off the
payroll of Clintons personal office, though not without negotiations about whether he would be allowed to
keep 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 simmered
between 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 member
of her familys circle, came to worry that the overlap between the foundation and Bands business interests
could backfire on the Clintons. Podesta, who came in to put the foundations house in order in 2011, says, of
the 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 for
Band. Hillary and Chelseas view was, Look, if youre going to work for the foundation you should work for
the 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 accomplished
half of what I have in my post presidency without Doug Band.1 (The New York Times reported that Band
helped edit the statement.)2 Likewise, Hillarys camp has struck a conciliatory tone. While she recognizes
that after years of putting her family first, Dougs family must be his priority, she appreciates the support he
continues 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 at
events, such as a fund-raiser Band co-hosted for Terry McAuliffe in February. Its gone from being a
surrogate son relationship to an awkward thickness when theyre in the room together, says one person with
close knowledge of the relationship who has witnessed this dynamic firsthand. Its like when your wife
cheats 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 aides
efforts to capitalize on their relationship. Others close to Clinton have also observed a distinct chill between
them. As always, however, Clinton detests confrontation. Its hard for him, says the person with close
knowledge of the relationship. At some points in his career, he spent more time with Doug than he did with
his own wife. They knew everything about each other, he loved seeing Dougs family, loved the stories and
the antics. And then, to have it turn into your adoptive son has run away. ... It burns him internally, and his
way 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 Clinton
guy, says Bands former White House colleague. Doug has developed a network that stands on his own
the 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 on
Max and Sophie, whom he speaks about in near-reverential terms. In late June, he added more room for his
growing family (he and Lily are expecting their third child), purchasing another eighth-floor unit in the Essex
House for $1.5 million. Theres good in the world that he has done, and now his family and his friends are
his real focus, says Sobelman. When we talk, its more: Hows work? Its going well. Now, lets talk
football. Band is also teaching an occasional class at New York University where he is billed as the
Honorable 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 Clinton
circles predict that Band would, for once, remain outside the action, doing no more than fund-raising. There
are a lot of people jockeying for position and Doug is a little bit on the sidelines, says the former White
House colleague. Its good to have someone around Clinton who is a little less us against them, a little
more were all in this together. But others believe Band would be right back at Clintons side if given the
chance, despite all that has come between them. You never really leave ... because you dont want to, says
Begala. 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.

Source URL: http://www.newrepublic.com//article/114790/how-doug-band-drove-wedge-through-clinton-dynasty

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