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Those of us old-timers here know well of
Greg Craig. He’s been around the liberal
block a time or two.

~~~~~

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/craig111998.htm

Crisis Quarterback: Gregory Craig Is Calling the Plays On Clinton’s Team

By Lloyd Grove and John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 19, 1998; Page D01

Gregory B. Craig’s friends were perplexed two months ago when he gave up one of the most prestigious jobs in Washington to take one of the most troublesome:

Why descend from the rarefied aerie of foreign policy into the squalid mess of a sex scandal?

Even Craig — who’ll be in the game today as President Clinton’s designated “quarterback” when the House Judiciary Committee opens its impeachment hearings — wasn’t eager for the new assignment.

*snip*

He also served as the U.S. special coordinator on Tibet, managing a critical piece of the Sino-American relationship. These plum assignments were the logical extension of Craig’s quarter-century as a blue-chip Washington lawyer, influential Senate staffer and key player in the foreign policy establishment.

But getting mixed up in Clinton’s personal problems struck some as a lousy career move. Moreover, Craig was joining a White House staff simmering with factional disputes since the Monica Lewinsky matter became public in January.

Yet Craig was hardly new to the business of rescuing public figures from perilous personal crises.

While at the powerhouse law firm of Williams & Connolly — where he was a partner of David Kendall, now Clinton’s private attorney — Craig safely guided his former boss, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), through hazardous televised testimony in the 1991 Palm Beach rape trial of nephew William Kennedy Smith.

“There’s no one I’d rather be with in a crisis,” says Ethel Kennedy, another member of the famous clan who has relied on Craig’s advice in recent years.