Gauldin has played a key role in the White House’s ongoing attempts to counter negative reporting about the president’s personal life, including the sexual-harassment suit filed by former state employee Paula Jones. Gauldin went to DOE in early 1993 to serve as director of public affairs and, one source said, as a White House “spy” at the troubled agency. Gauldin did not return phone calls from reporters. But Albert Barr, the firm’s president, told NEWSWEEK that “Mike Gauldin was our prime contact–and, at the end of the day, he was the decision maker.” Barr also noted that his firm was paid about $100,000 to perform similar services for the Bush-Quayle presidential campaign in 1992.
White House aides proclaimed that efforts to rate reporters “will not be tolerated,” and Carmen MacDougall, O’Leary’s top press aide, said DOE “should be held accountable for letting this go on as long as it did.” But MacDougall wouldn’t comment on Gauldin, and O’Leary, asked whether she had reminded White House officials that the idea had come from one of Clinton’s longtime aides, said only that “this woman is a lady.”
