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One Thursday evening last September, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair met in New York to conduct what was supposed to be a high-minded discourse on terrorism, geopolitics, and the global economy. The setting was elegant—the beaux arts ballroom of the Essex House, an iconic tower on Central Park South. The 78-person VIP guest list included Harvey Weinstein, Eli Broad, Blackstone co-founders Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson, Silicon Valley impresario Sean Parker, Billie Jean King, George Pataki, and New York City police chief Ray Kelly, along with CEOs and top executives from companies like Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, BP, and Bank of America. Somehow, these onetime world leaders, corporate titans, and other notable personages converged in the center of New York without the event ever being noticed by the press.The guests had been wrangled, persuaded, flattered, and otherwise enticed to attend by Doug Band, a tall man with genial, unmemorable features and a deferential demeanor. In fact, the gathering was taking place in his own building, underneath his expansive eighth-floor apartment, and it represented a major triumph for him. ...But instead of introducing his distinguished guests, he launched into a long-winded sales pitch. Teneo was the next big thing in executive consulting, he informed the audience. He played a promotional video about the firm. He introduced the heads of Teneo’s divisions, describing their résumés and asking each to stand in turn. Meanwhile, the onetime guardians of the special relationship were left loitering awkwardly in the wings. “It was unnecessarily inappropriate,” says one guest. “It was flagrant.” Bush had evidently gotten more than he had bargained for in accepting the (paid) invitation: At one point during the evening, a guest saw him shoot a glance at his aide that plainly said, What the bleep is going on?The entire episode was pure Doug Band. He is rarely written about, almost never quoted, and many Clinton associates are loath to discuss him on the record. “Doug is taboo—no one touches the guy,” says one person who has had extensive dealings with him. On the handful of occasions he has spoken openly to the media, he has struck an impeccably humble tone. “The thing I most enjoy in my job is helping people,” he once told his college alumni magazine. “I have been able to remain behind the scenes, making a difference and changing people’s lives.” But as Band attempts to build a business of his own, the methods he once employed discreetly in the service of his boss have started to attract unwelcome attention. ...Inside the realm known as Clintonland, he is the subject of considerable angst. There are those who worry about the overlap between his work for the Clinton Global Initiative— which he conceived and helped run for six years—and his energetic efforts to expand Teneo’s client base. And there are those who worry about how some of the messier aspects of the charity’s operations could create trouble for Hillary Clinton, who has made the family foundation her base as she contemplates a presidential run. But the real cause for these anxieties runs deeper. At its heart, the unease with Band reflects an unease with the phenomenon of post-presidential Clintonism itself. ...
... Band had a key ally on Hillary’s team: Huma Abedin. Bill’s body man and Hillary’s body woman had bonded over their loyalty to their bosses. They were known to show up at parties together, which some saw as an endearing big brother–little sister dynamic, and which others interpreted as evidence that Abedin had a crush on Band. They also had an ingenious method of collecting intelligence on each other’s behalf. Abedin would sidle up to someone in Bill’s camp and, in a confiding tone, make a disparaging remark about Band. If it was reciprocated, she would relay the criticisms to Band and he would do the same for her, says someone who fell for this technique. “They had each other’s back a lot,” says the former White House colleague. ...
... From the beginning, Teneo resembled an outpost of Clintonland more than an independent entity. Clinton and Blair came on as paid advisers. One of the firm’s managing directors is the former CEO of the horse-racing and gambling empire belonging to the family of Belinda Stronach, a Canadian former politician whose friendship with Clinton has been the subject of considerable speculation. Nancy Hernreich Bowen, director of Oval Office operations under Clinton, works in the Hong Kong office. Last year, Abedin signed on with the firm, providing, in her own words, “strategic advice and consulting services to the firm’s management team” as well as helping to “organize a major annual firm event.” (The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating whether her work conflicted with her position as a paid State Department consultant.) ...
