That may surprise clients like MCA and AT&T which pay Strauss and his firm millions of dollars a year to guide them through the Washington maze. But if Strauss came clean, someone might call him an influence peddler - even worse than a lobbyist, though not quite so bad as a fixer, the term lobbyists really hate. “The word lobby has a soiled odor about it,” says Valenti. His fastidiousness is a source of bemusement to Federal Communications Commission officials whom Valenti has been wooing to keep the TV networks from sharing in syndication sales of reruns. “If Jack Valenti isn’t a lobbyist,” says one, “Buckingham isn’t a palace.”
Strauss, Valenti and Clifford consider themselves “advisers” or “strategists”; they would never be seen in Gucci Gulch, the well-trod corridor outside the Senate Finance Committee. But they do funnel money to politicians. (The political-action committee of Strauss’s law firm gave $342,124 to 1990 congressional candidates.) And they do use their influence. When a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee was probing money-laundering by Clifford’s client, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Clifford effectively derailed the investigation with a call to his old friend, Foreign Relations Committee chairman Claiborne Pell.
At 84, Clifford suddenly finds himself embroiled in scandal, accused of acting as a front for a group of Arabs who wanted to secretly buy an American bank. Clifford insists he was a dupe and seems stunned that his good name has been sullied. But selling your good name can ultimately become a contradiction in terms - no matter what you call yourself.
