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• At least one potential short-lister declined consideration
(and vetting), though we continued with some odd public
record review in case the decision changed. At least one
person wrongly told the press s/he was on the "short list,"
and we held interviews in the field out of respect.
• our team had no leaks. To this day, I have never read a
book or news article that got all of the facts right.
Two days after the general election (that is, Thursday, november
5), President-elect Clinton named Christopher and
Jordan the heads of his transition team. They soon assigned
the same group of us to Cabinet Selection, with two wonderful
new leaders and a team which rapidly expanded. This
time, I led a handful of non-lawyer researchers, managed the
data and assignments, and organized the files and memos. I
still have a copy of the (pre-WWW) research manual I created
. . . and probably should not still have the all of the name
tabs from the filing cabinet dividers. To answer the question
more directly:
• no Cabinet assignment was pre-determined. Multiple
people were considered for every position.
• Quite a few top White House positions and sub-Cabinet
nominations were considered in the same process, and the
same batches of memos.
• Soon-to-be Secretary of State Christopher did not know
we were preparing materials about him until they were
ready to go to President-elect Clinton (Thanksgiving
weekend 1992). nothing had been promised to him.
I worked on VP selection again in 2000, secretly and parttime
while an associate at a DC law firm. (Yes, it killed my
billable hours.) Unlike in 1992, there was no full-time research
team, as Al Gore had more time to make a decision
— the process began slowly in April 2000, and the Democratic
national Convention did not take place until August. Many
of the same people were involved as in 1992 (including selection
process head Christopher and some of the short-list vetting
team attorneys).
Some of my most memorable life experiences and impor-
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