Check this out:
http://www.washingtonian.com/capital_comment/jul03capcom.html Too Smart for Fannie?
Deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick abruptly left the number-two job at the Justice Department near the start of Bill Clinton’s second term, enticed by a seven-figure salary as vice chair at Fannie Mae.
The word around town was that Gorelick wanted to make some big money before returning to government service in an Al Gore administration.
Considered by many to be the smartest young lawyer to arrive in Washington in many years, Radcliffe grad Gorelick had served as general counsel at Defense and made a name for herself as a star litigator. Her name was mentioned as a Secretary of Defense or Attorney General under President Gore.
Now Gorelick has quietly left Fannie Mae, the federally chartered housing-finance corporation, and taken a position at the law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Going back to the firm where her meteoric Washington career started, Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, was no option. That firm went out of business in 2001.
Colleagues at Fannie Mae say Gorelick was too smart to stay with them forever. “She is the kind of person who needed bigger challenges,” says one admiring colleague. He added that as she had done at Janet Reno’s chaotic Justice Department, Gorelick had been the one to hold Fannie Mae together for the past six years.
At Wilmer Cutler, Gorelick is expected to work in the firm’s expanded corporate-fraud area, headed by former SEC enforcement chief Bill McLucas.
No one doubts that Gorelick, 53, still has the stuff to be a star in the next Democratic administration. But she may have to wait a lot longer than expected.