Another fixture of the Clinton administration is helping Barack Obama make his move from senator to president.
The New York Times reports that Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s secretary for his eight years in office, is volunteering at the offices of the Obama-Biden transition team.
She’s there at the invitation of John D. Podesta, the transition co-chairman, who also served in the Clinton White House, finishing up as chief of staff.
“Of course I asked her because in the 30 years we have worked together, I have never known anyone with more grace, dedication and public spirit than Betty,” Podesta told the Times. “And she has one mean Rolodex.”
The paper did not report whether Monica S. Lewinsky’s name remains in that Rolodex.
In 1998, Currie had to appear five times before the grand jury investigating the relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky.
After her testimony became public, some people faulted her for possibly enabling the relationship between the president and the young intern, adopting a “don’t ask, don’t tell” stance.
Others, though, saw her as yet another victim of Clinton’s recklessness.
“She didn’t deserve this - at all,” a co-worker told The Washington Post at the time. “She’s not a villain by any stretch of the imagination.”
Currie, 69, came to the White House after serving as the office manager of the “War Room” during the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.
The room was the place where James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and other Clinton advisers planned strategy.
Currie also worked on the Clinton-Gore transition team.
And she took part in the 1988 Michael Dukakis presidential campaign and the 1984 Walter Mondale campaign.
Previous to this, Currie had been an executive assistant and personal secretary in several federal agencies, including the U.S. Peace Corps and ACTION, the umbrella agency over the Peace Corps.
During this time, she was the executive secretary for three directors, Joseph Blatchford at the Peace Corps and ACTION and Michael Balzano and Sam W. Brown Jr. at ACTION.
Currie retired from the federal government at the end of Clinton’s second term.
In 2006, she became a member of the board of National Peace Corps Association. She recently became a member of the Alcohol Beverage Board of St. Mary’s County, MD.
She and her husband, Bob, a retired Environmental Protection Agency planning director, took Socks, the Clinton’s White House cat, into their home at the end of Clinton presidency.
The cat is now 19 and reportedly has cancer.
Currie remains in contact with the Clintons, the Times reported, and contributed $750 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
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