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WASHINGTON – He's not president, a Cabinet member or ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Barack Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world. Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Kerry from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but has not resolved a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Kerry knows how Washington works. ... "Obviously, Sen. Kerry is somebody who has a broad range of experience and...

Listened to an interesting talk today by Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, at a New America think-tank conference on job creation. A few observations: 1) If Bernstein’s talk was any indication, don’t look for much public celebration by the White House if we get some good 3Q and 4Q GDP numbers. As he put it, “Absent robust job growth, it is not a true economic recovery.” He stressed this point several times. I don’t even think you will hear an administration official use the word “recovery” in 2009. 2) Bernstein trotted out several interesting slides —...

Obama chose a Labor Day union picnic on Monday as the backdrop to announce his selection of Ron Bloom, a member of his auto industry task force, as senior counselor for manufacturing policy. Bloom planned to travel to Cincinnati with Obama for an afternoon announcement at the AFL-CIO event. "They have skirted around that process so there is no accountability for the czars," she said Monday. "Nobody has to go up and testify in front of Congress. They don't have to go through the process." Bloom has already sidestepped congressional approval. He was senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner...

President Obama's announcement of his selection of Ron Bloom as "manufacturing czar" follows the weekend resignation of Van Jones, the White House "green jobs czar" who had come under fire in recent weeks for past inflammatory statements. As one White House "czar" departs amid a cloud of controversy, an undeterred President Obama is naming a new one to advise him on manufacturing, defying conservative critics who have raised concerns about these advisory positions that do not require congressional oversight. Obama chose a Labor Day union picnic on Monday as the backdrop to announce his selection of Ron Bloom, a member...

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE – The White House is standing behind its auto industry adviser whose company is accused of paying more than $1 million to win a lucrative deal with the New York state pension fund. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that the White House was aware of the allegations but backs Steven Rattner. Gibbs said Rattner is not likely to face criminal or civil charges, and that Rattner informed them of the pending investigation.

Second Emanuel joins Obama fray as health care adviserZeke, Rahm's older brother, advises on health care reform By JUDITH GRAHAM and NOAM N. LEVEY Chicago Tribune Updated: 04/05/2009 01:44:56 AM PDT CHICAGO — He's the oldest brother, a doctor and a scholar with a résumé the size of a small book. Though brothers Ari and Rahm are celebrities, he is the one they think could someday win the Nobel Prize. Ezekiel Emanuel has become something of a public figure, like his famous siblings, as he pursues a new challenge: trying to help the Obama administration reform the health care system....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million in compensation by hedge fund D.E. Shaw during the past year, according to financial disclosure forms released on Friday by the White House. ... Summers was also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major Wall Street firms and financial institutions, including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, the forms showed.

WASHINGTON – One of President Barack Obama's top economic advisers says the nation can afford to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in an attempt to jump-start a weak economy. But Larry Summers warns that fiscal discipline will be necessary once the economy recovers. He says the government must spend money now to revive an economy that shed more than 2 million jobs last year.

SAN DIEGO – A former adviser to Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Navy under President Clinton pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to possession of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Wade Rowland Sanders, 67, an attorney, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Whelan, U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt said in a written statement released Monday night. According to court records, Sanders admitted that on or about May 2, he possessed a computer and computer media that he knew contained more than 600 images of...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama underscored on Saturday his intent to push initiatives on climate change by naming John Holdren, an energy and climate specialist, as the new White House science adviser. Holdren is a Harvard University physicist who has focused on the causes and consequences of climate change and advocated policies aimed at sustainable development. He has also done extensive research on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Obama pledged to put a priority on encouraging scientific breakthroughs in areas such as alternative energy solutions and finding cures to diseases, as he announced the pick of Holdren and other...

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - A top adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain apologized on Monday after he was quoted as saying a September 11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain. The campaign of Democrat Barack Obama condemned the remark by McCain political adviser Charlie Black, calling it a "complete disgrace." "I deeply regret the comments, they were inappropriate," Black said in a statement after McCain said that if Black had made such a comment, "I strenuously disagree" with it. "I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its...

MIAMI (AP) - A top adviser is leaving Republican John McCain's presidential campaign because he doesn't want to work against Democrat Barack Obama. Mark McKinnon, the chief media consultant to McCain, wrote in a campaign memo last year that if Obama won the Democratic nomination, he would not actively campaign against him. With the results of Tuesday night's primaries in Kentucky and Oregon, Obama claimed he had a majority of convention delegates. McKinnon said Tuesday evening he was making good on his pledge, and was "moving from middle linebacker to cheerleader" for McCain. "I'll still be around from time to...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - After running one of Silicon Valley's powerhouse companies for six years, Carly Fiorina now has her sights set on the White House. Not for her — not yet, at least. But for John McCain. Fiorina, 53, joined the Republican senator's presidential campaign this spring. She brings with her a long list of wealthy friends and supporters and intimate insight into how some of the largest corporations work, having been at the helm of Hewlett-Packard Co. and before that, senior management at AT&T Inc. and its spinoff Lucent Technologies. While the new gig is her first in...

John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements. Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign’s payroll, but would also step down from his role...

JERUSALEM – Israel should give up its nuclear weapons to ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program, argues an adviser on nuclear issues to Sen. Barack Obama. Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, also previously dismissed reports Israel's Sept. 6 airstrike targeted a Syrian nuclear reactor as "nonsense" and called Damascus' nuclear program "miniscule." Immediately following Israel's air raid, Cirincione listed "Israelis [who] want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria" as among those spreading rumors Syria was constructing a nuclear facility.

Are we headed toward bigger government? Senator McCain's position is that there is a role for government, and the primary thing is that you identify government's role and make sure that it does it well. The striking thing that has come out of the campaign is the degree to which the American people have lost trust in their government to pursue genuine national priorities, and there are three instances in which this gets voiced pretty clearly; probably the most vivid is the immigration debate, where people simply did not believe that the federal government [would secure the borders]...so Senator...

Hillary Clinton distances herself from adviser who branded Lord David Trimble a 'crankpot' By Toby Harnden in Washington Last Updated: 2:41am GMT 28/03/2008 Hillary Clinton's campaign has disowned a senior adviser who branded Lord Trimble, former Northern Ireland First Minister, a sexist "crankpot" whose views were suspect because he was a Protestant. Under fire: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are greeted by a smiling eight-year-old Bosnian girl in 1996 "It is not the campaign's policy to attack leaders from other countries," said Howard Wolfson, Mrs Clinton's communications director. Jamie Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state in Bill Clinton's administration, lashed...

NEW YORK - CNN is calling its Republican presidential debate a roaring success, despite a flap over one on-air questioner who turned out to be an adviser to Hillary Clinton. "The realty is, the questions are the heart of the debate, and the questions were great," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief, who produced the debate. "The answers, by and large, were great, too." Even so, CNN was caught by surprise when one participant in the open-forum event turned out to be a member of a steering committee of gays and lesbians for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. During...

Normally, U.S. soldiers train to fight, not to train. But these are not normal times — not in a chaotic Iraq where President Bush is banking on improving Iraqi security forces so the American military can begin to pull out, or at least pull back. U.S. soldiers and Marines are being plucked out of combat positions to be "embedded" with Iraqi army and police units as trainers and advisers. They face numerous obstacles, including language, a lack of resources and loose linkages between the Iraqi security forces and their civilian leaders. But U.S. commanders see this effort as the key...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top campaign adviser is being paid to provide marketing strategy to AT&T at a time when the governor's office is involved in negotiations on legislation potentially worth billions of dollars to the telecommunications giant. Political consultant Matthew Dowd's involvement with the governor and AT&T at the same time presents, at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of interest, government watchdogs warned. Dowd and his consulting firm are currently assisting San Antonio-based AT&T with the rollout of its U-verse service in Texas. The product is designed to compete with cable TV by sending TV programming and a bundle...

HIT, Iraq, June 4, 2006 – Bringing the Iraqi army to the lead in the country's beleaguered Anbar province is a tough assignment. But Marines assigned to the military transition team at Firm Base 4 here have taken it on. Vehicles return from a patrol in Hit, Iraq. Army troops work with Iraqi soldiers to maintain order in the Euphrates River city in Anbar province. Photo by Jim Garamone  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Along with soldiers of Battalion Task Force 1-36, they are working to train Iraqi soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division. Anbar...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American troops will probably be gone from Iraq by mid-2008 as the Iraqi forces they are training take over from them, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Friday. He said he expected the roughly 133,000 U.S. troops to be cut to less than 100,000 by year's end and an "overwhelming majority" of them to have left by the end of 2007 under a U.S.-Iraqi plan for progressively handing over security. "We have a roadmap, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000,"...

Bush adviser charged with thefts Claude Allen was considered a rising Republican star US President George W Bush's former political adviser has been charged with stealing more than $5,000 (£2,900) from department stores. The president said he was "shocked" and "sad" on hearing the news about Claude Allen, who resigned abruptly as his domestic policy adviser last month. Mr Allen, 45, has denied at least 25 thefts from Target and Hecht's stores. The scam allegedly involved Mr Allen claiming refunds for merchandise that he did not buy. Mr Allen was arrested on Thursday by police in Montgomery County, Maryland, following...

Much has been made about high-profile, high-powered Democrats in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, from his wife, Maria Shriver, to his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy. Then there's Bonnie Reiss, a close Schwarzenegger friend who serves as one of his most trusted senior advisers, and Daniel Zingale, Shriver's chief of staff. But there is another Democratic powerbroker in the Horseshoe, a long-time Schwarzenegger confidant who is as influential in the administration as he is invisible to the public: David Crane. "He is involved in all of the key deliberations that I have been a part of,"� said Sunne McPeak, secretary of...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russia's president Vladimir Putin has dismissed a top economic adviser who said he was resigning because he could no longer work in a government that had done away with political freedoms, the Kremlin said late Tuesday. Putin signed a decree releasing Andrei Illarionov from his duties, the president's press service said. Illarionov, a lone voice of dissent in a Kremlin dominated by Putin's fellow KGB veterans, has criticized the state's increasing control over the economy and said he is being muzzled. The outspoken Putin adviser had earlier offered his resignation, complaining that he was no longer...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2005 – President Bush's national security adviser today dismissed critics who demand an immediate or early withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. "The advocates of these policies share a core belief that the war in Iraq is unwinnable and that America and the world will be better off by abandoning Iraq," Stephen J. Hadley said during remarks given at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "The president respectfully disagrees," Hadley said. "He believes that setting a timetable for withdrawal would send the wrong message to our men and women in uniform and in civilian service...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2005 – The U.S. is already on the road to complete victory in Iraq, the president's national security adviser told Sunday talk show hosts today. "We do have a strategy and we think we're making progress" on the president's National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, Stephen Hadley said on "Fox News Sunday." He added that "this is a difficult thing that's being done." Hadley said the subtitle of the strategy, unveiled Nov. 30, defined what the Bush administration considers a complete victory: "Helping the Iraqi People Defeat the Terrorists and Build an Inclusive Democratic State." Hadley said...

Former adviser Berger expects another domestic terrorist attack BY KEN MCLAUGHLIN Knight Ridder Newspapers Posted on Wed, May. 11, 2005 SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - Two former national security leaders say they are perplexed that suicide bombers have not targeted Americans on U.S. soil. "The threshold of entry into this business of suicide bombs is not very high," said Sandy Berger, national security adviser in President Clinton's second term. "All you need to do is strap something to you and walk into some place where there are a lot of people. It's a little bit of a mystery to...

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday stripped many of the duties of his top economic adviser - an outspoken critic who has accused the Kremlin of trying to muzzle voices of dissent and civil society in Russia. Andrei Illarionov, who last week said the Kremlin efforts to censure the public would eventually spark mass protests, was stripped of his responsibilities as Russia's envoy to the Group of 8 industrial nations, the Kremlin said. Another top adviser, Igor Shuvalov, was given Illarionov's duties, which typically involve heavy preparations for G-8 summit and meetings, earning the envoys the affectionate...

Rice, who turned 50 on Sunday, was be the first black woman, and only the second woman ever, tapped to be the nation's top diplomat. As national security adviser for the past four years, she has become one of Bush's closest confidantes and primary counselors as the nation waged a war on terror that was unimaginable when the administration took office in 2001.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Talks aimed at persuading the rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to withdraw from Najaf collapsed yesterday, paving the way for a resumption of the bloody battle for control of the city. Iraq's national-security adviser, Muwaffak al-Rubaie, said he was "overcome with deep sorrow" by the failure of the negotiations, launched late last week in a bid to avert a potentially explosive showdown between al-Sadr's black-clad militia fighters and the joint U.S.-Iraqi force ringing the ancient city.

Covering up? U.S. officials tell us that the FBI is focusing on a single document in its investigation of former White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger. Investigators are trying to determine why Mr. Berger improperly removed a highly classified after-action report by Richard A. Clarke, an aide to Mr. Berger, that was harshly critical of the Clinton administration's response to the so-called millennium terrorist plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport and other targets in late 1999. Mr. Clarke was the National Security Council staff aide who ended up as a Democratic holdover in the Bush administration. He...

Annan adviser attacks American occupation and Bremer's tactics Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Thursday April 15, 2004 The Guardian (UK) The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last night, condemning the detention of prisoners without trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi, a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior UN representative in Afghanistan and now serves as special adviser on Iraq to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, also criticised the Americans for their onslaught on Falluja. "The cordoning off...

The man named as the possible Whitehall "mole" for a BBC report claiming the Government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has denied he was the source of the story. Dr David Kelly, a Government adviser on Iraqi weapons, said he had met the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan a week before he broadcast his story on the Radio 4 Today programme. However, he told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that Mr Gilligan's account of his conversation with his source was so different from their conversation that he did not believe that he could be the source....

Ahmed Jbarra, the Palestinian prisoner who was released last week after serving 28 years of a life sentence in an Israeli prison for planting a booby-trapped refrigerator at Jerusalem's Kikar Zion in 1975 and murdering 14 people, has been named a special adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Senior PA officials told The Jerusalem Post that the decision to appoint Jbarra to the new post was a "natural" one, taking into consideration his "great contribution to the Palestinian cause." Jbarra, 69, who is better known by his nom de guerre Abu al-Sukkar, was released as a goodwill gesture on...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Garry South, longtime chief political adviser to Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, is signing on with Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., as a senior adviser to his presidential campaign.</p> <p>South, whose aggressive tactics are credited with engineering Davis' hard-fought re-election victory in November, will remain in Los Angeles and focus his efforts on Lieberman's California campaign operation, said Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera.</p>

<p>The president's chief economic adviser said Thursday in Sacramento that stimulating the economy is more urgent than vanquishing the budget deficit.</p> <p>The observation from Stephen Friedman, a former Wall Street investment banker who's advised President Bush since December, follows persistent criticism that the administration's plan to cut taxes on dividends and some income arrives at a bad time.</p>

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