Lloyd Cutler

White House counsel

It was early 1994, and Bill Clinton, having just lost one White House counsel, urgently needed another to help him cope with the Whitewater affair that threatened to engulf his presidency. "I wanted a Lloyd Cutler-type of lawyer," Clinton joked as he announced his choice, "so I just decided I would go to the original first and see how I could do."

Lloyd Norton Cutler, lawyer and government official: born New York 10 November 1917; White House counsel 1979-81, 1994; married 1941 Louise Howe (died 1989; one son, three daughters), 1990 Rhoda Kraft; died Washington, DC 8 May 2005.

It was early 1994, and Bill Clinton, having just lost one White House counsel, urgently needed another to help him cope with the Whitewater affair that threatened to engulf his presidency. "I wanted a Lloyd Cutler-type of lawyer," Clinton joked as he announced his choice, "so I just decided I would go to the original first and see how I could do."

Clinton got his man, as he usually did. In doing so, he obtained the services of one of Washington's wisest insiders, among the last of a breed made famous by the likes of Clark Clifford and Edward Bennett Williams, who glided between lobbying, the law and high politics. They helped out giant corporations and presidents alike, often invisible to the unpractised eye. Trust and discretion were their most precious commodities.

Cutler had done the White House job before, when Jimmy Carter named him his counsel in mid-1979. The immediate problem was the President's brother Billy and his misadventures with Libya. But Cutler soon found himself dealing with nuclear arms negotiations, the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the crisis of the American hostages in Tehran, seized when the deposed Shah went for medical treatment in the United States. Cutler was entrusted with the hugely delicate job of reaching a secret deal in 1980, to persuade the dying Reza Pahlavi to leave the US for Panama, that spared Carter the embarrassment of publicly abandoning an old ally in his hour of need.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan became President and Cutler returned to his lucrative practice at the law firm Wilmington, Cutler and Pickering he had helped found in 1962 in Washington. Its blue-chip corporate and media clients ranged from IBM and the US car industry to ABC, CBS, NBC and The Washington Post.

All the while, however, he maintained his political connections, and it was no real surprise when Clinton summoned him back to the White House at the age of 76. Cutler agreed, but only on condition that he retain his position at his law firm. A loophole was found, enabling him to take the job as a "special government employee" serving no more than 130 days, without pay.

In that brief tenure, he poured some oil on very troubled waters, thanks to the respect he enjoyed even among Clinton's opponents on Capitol Hill. As a Republican committee member put at one Congressional hearing, "You're one of the smoothest operators in Washington, Mr Cutler, you're much too smooth." It was grudging admiration for one of the city's most accomplished troubleshooters.

He looked the part too, with thick white hair, and a creased and slightly jowly face. Cutler had a deep warm voice that exuded gravitas and institutional memory. He was polished and courteous, clubby and notably Anglophile, with a quick wit as well. Asked his opinion of the newly elected Clinton in December 1992, he replied, "In Bo Derek terms, I'd give him a 10."

Cutler's political sympathies were liberal Democrat. But in a fashion rare in today's polarised Washington, he could work both sides of the aisle. He once represented George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, and supported the doomed 1987 Supreme Court nomination of the conservative jurist Robert Bork, anathema to most Democrats.

Indeed, he remained above the political fray until the end. In 2004, President George W. Bush appointed Cutler to the special commission which earlier this year delivered a blistering report on US intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Rupert Cornwell