Bernard W. Nussbaum, Clinton Counsel and Defender, Dies at 84

Bernard W. Nussbaum, who as President Invoice Clinton’s first White Home counsel turned a lightning rod in a rash of bitter controversies that plagued Mr. Clinton early in his administration, died on Sunday at his residence in Manhattan. He was 84.

The trigger was coronary heart illness, his son Frank mentioned.

Mr. Nussbaum was a company lawyer in New York and an previous good friend of the primary woman, Hillary Clinton, when her husband named him to the counsel put up after being elected as a Democrat to his first time period in 1992.

Mr. Nussbaum served for 14 months, resigning at Mr. Clinton’s request amid relentless assaults on the Clintons over a sequence of imbroglios, beginning with a failed Arkansas land enterprise wherein they’d taken half years earlier than they reached the White Home — an episode referred to as the Whitewater affair. Then got here the suicide of the deputy counsel, Vincent W. Foster Jr., giving rise to official inquiries and fevered conspiracy theories. And at last there was the F.B.I.’s settlement to a White Home request for recordsdata on dozens of Republicans whom the bureau had screened for White Home jobs in previous administrations.

The episodes drew accusations of wrongdoing from Republican critics and right-wing enemies of the Clintons in addition to expressions of concern by many individuals with out a partisan or ideological agenda. And Mr. Nussbaum’s aggressive efforts to guard the president and first woman solely added gas to the assaults and doubts.

His critics accused him of obstructing justice. His supporters backed his argument that he was doing what any good lawyer would do in combating to guard a shopper.

However even a few of his supporters mentioned that Mr. Nussbaum — a fast-talking New Yorker whose robust authorized ways had made him extremely prized by company shoppers in high-stakes litigation — had failed to acknowledge a key actuality: that fiercely insisting on a shopper’s privateness rights and nondisclosure privileges might be shortsighted when the shopper was a prime elected official looking for the general public’s belief.

After departing from the White Home, Mr. Nussbaum agreed that the authorized enjoying subject he had encountered in Washington was far completely different from the one on which he had thrived in his residence metropolis, New York.

There, he mentioned, legal professionals targeted on combating to the fullest for his or her shoppers, however in Washington the principle concern was how issues seemed. And in Washington, he mentioned, opponents wished to “beat you into the bottom, destroy you, suck out your blood.”

Bernard William Nussbaum was born in Manhattan on March 23, 1937, to Feivel and Molly (Weintraub) Nussbaum, immigrants from Poland. He grew up on the Decrease East Facet of Manhattan. His father was a garment presser who turned a union enterprise supervisor, and he had met Molly, who labored in a distinct garment manufacturing facility, by the labor motion.

Mr. Nussbaum graduated from Stuyvesant Excessive College, from Columbia College, in 1958, and from Harvard Legislation College, in 1961.

In 1963, he married Toby Sheinfeld, who died in 2006. He married Nancy Kuhn in 2008. She died final 12 months. Along with his son Frank, Mr. Nussbaum is survived by one other son, Peter; a daughter, Emily Nussbaum; a stepson, Invoice Kuhn; a brother, Martin; and 6 grandchildren.

After regulation college, Mr. Nussbaum was an assistant United States lawyer in Manhattan for a number of years earlier than becoming a member of the New York regulation agency of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in 1966.

He briefly returned to the general public area in 1974, when he served as a senior counsel on the Home of Representatives Judiciary Committee because it investigated the Watergate scandal. It suggest that the Home impeach President Richard M. Nixon, however Nixon resigned earlier than the Home may act. Whereas working for the committee, Mr. Nussbaum befriended one of many younger legal professionals aiding him, Hillary Rodham, the long run first woman.

After his committee work he returned to his regulation agency in New York and remained in personal observe till Invoice Clinton introduced him to the White Home nearly 20 years later.

The Whitewater controversy stemmed from an finally unsuccessful land-development partnership that the Clintons entered into in 1979, whereas Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas, with the proprietor of a financial savings and mortgage affiliation, James B. McDougal, and his spouse, Susan McDougal.

After Mr. Clinton turned president, the Clintons’ roles within the enterprise turned a spotlight of scrutiny and accusations. Among the many points have been whether or not they had been concerned of their companions’ illegally channeling cash to the financially sinking enterprise and whether or not Mr. Clinton had personally benefited from these strikes. The Clintons denied involvement within the frauds, or any data of them as they have been occurring; they mentioned they’d misplaced tens of hundreds of {dollars} within the mission.

Mr. Nussbaum was criticized for suggesting that the Clintons resist turning over Whitewater-related paperwork to investigators. The critics additionally contended that non-public conferences that Mr. Nussbaum had with Treasury Division officers throughout an investigation into the financial savings and mortgage amounted to White Home interference with the inquiry, out of concern, the critics mentioned, over what investigators may discover out in regards to the Clintons’ ties to the S&L.

Mr. Nussbaum mentioned that the conferences have been merely meant to study, for his shopper, the place the inquiry stood. Mr. Clinton publicly mentioned in March 1994 that Mr. Nussbaum had carried out nothing fallacious within the matter, although he allowed that the conferences might need left an impression of impropriety. The subsequent day, he requested Mr. Nussbaum to resign.

Mr. Clinton “requested me to resign in response to media and political stress,” Mr. Nussbaum instructed The New York Instances in 2001. There had been “numerous innuendo within the press” and “phantom scandals,” he mentioned.

The Whitewater inquiry was pursued initially by a particular prosecutor appointed by Lawyer Normal Janet Reno and later primarily by Kenneth W. Starr, a Republican appointed by a three-judge panel. The Clintons have been by no means charged with any crimes, although it was Mr. Starr’s rivalry that Mr. Clinton had obstructed the investigation.

The McDougals and 12 others have been finally convicted within the affair. President Clinton pardoned Ms. McDougal earlier than he left workplace in 2001. Mr. McDougal died in a jail medical facility in 1998.

Mr. Foster was discovered fatally shot, gun in hand, in a suburban Virginia park in July 1993, and the Justice Division started an investigation. Conspiracy theories quickly started to floor.

A few of the most zealous contended that Mr. Foster had been murdered and that his physique had been moved to the park to stage it as a suicide as a result of, the speculation went, as a former accomplice of Mrs. Clinton’s in a Little Rock regulation agency that had carried out work for the financial savings and mortgage, he had info that will tie the Clintons to Whitewater criminality.

The conspiracy theories solely accelerated when Mr. Nussbaum sought to limit Justice Division entry to Mr. Foster’s workplace recordsdata. However testifying earlier than one in every of many congressional panels he confronted throughout his tenure, he contended that he had been ethically obligated to evaluation the recordsdata earlier than exhibiting them to the investigators and to carry again any that contained delicate White Home materials unrelated to the loss of life.

On that and different “massive calls” he had made, Mr. Nussbaum declared to his typically hostile questioners, “I made the best calls.”

Mr. Starr and his predecessor as particular counsel, Robert B. Fiske Jr., each discovered after separate inquiries that Mr. Foster had killed himself within the park as a result of he was deeply depressed amid the rising pressures of his job.

The furor over the F.B.I.’s personnel recordsdata arose when the White Home Workplace of Personnel Safety efficiently requested confidential background reviews on people then working within the White Home in addition to on dozens of figures who had held posts there in earlier Republican administrations. The request kinds bore Mr. Nussbaum’s preprinted title.

The White Home mentioned the safety workplace’s acquisition of the recordsdata had been an harmless mistake, and Mr. Nussbaum mentioned he had not recognized the workplace was doing this. However a Home committee chairman accused him of mendacity to the panel about circumstances surrounding the hiring of the workplace’s director. In 2000, Robert W. Ray, who succeeded Mr. Starr as particular counsel, introduced that no criminality had been discovered within the request for the recordsdata, and that Mr. Nussbaum had not dedicated perjury.

Mr. Nussbaum was lengthy gone from the White Home and again on the Wachtell, Lipton regulation agency in New York when Mr. Clinton was impeached and acquitted in his second-term scandal stemming from his affair with a White Home intern.

Within the interview with The Instances in 2001, Mr. Nussbaum mentioned he had no regrets about his turbulent time in Washington. “It was,” he mentioned, “an amazing journey.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.