Lloyd Norton Cutler

Cutler, Lloyd Norton

(b. 10 November 1917 in New York City; d. 8 May 2005 in Washington, D.C.), lawyer and White House counsel under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Cutler was the only son of two children of Aaron Smith Cutler and Dorothy (Glaser) Cutler. Both parents were New York–born children of Jewish immigrants from eastern Poland. Cutler’s paternal grandfather changed the family name from Koslow and made a fortune in New York real estate. His father was a law partner of the prominent New York Democratic politician and mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and his mother, a grammar school teacher with a Hunter College degree, became a homemaker after her first child’s birth. Cutler attended New York City public schools, including DeWitt Clinton High School, graduating in 1932 at age fourteen. After one year at New York University, he transferred to Yale University, majoring in history and economics and graduating cum laude with a BA in 1936. Three years later he earned his LLB magna cum laude from Yale Law School, where he was also editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal.

After spending one year as clerk to Second Circuit Judge Charles Edward Clark, Cutler joined the New York corporate law firm Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in the fall of 1940, working on railroad reorganizations. In 1941 Cutler married Louise Winslow Howe, a Wellesley College graduate and the daughter of a Chicago lawyer; the couple had four children.

Although not an observant Jew, Cutler, who visited Italy, Germany, Austria, and Hungary in 1939, fiercely opposed Adolf Hitler’s Germany and strongly supported American intervention in the war. In February 1942 he moved to Washington, D.C., as assistant general counsel to the Lend-Lease Administration. Cutler spent three months in late 1942 as junior counsel on the government team prosecuting eight captured German saboteurs who landed by submarine on the Long Island coast. Six were eventually executed. After the North African landings by Allied forces, in 1943 he spent nine months representing the Lend-Lease Administration overseas on the North African Economic Board. …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Cutler

Lloyd Norton Cutler (November 10, 1917–May 8, 2005) was an American attorney, who served as White House Counsel during the Democratic administrations of Presidents Carter and Clinton. He was also the trainer of the former Vice President of the European Parliament and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, M.P. Stavros Lambrinidis.

Contents [show] Early Life and Education[edit] Lloyd Cutler was born in New York City. His father was a trial lawyer. He graduated from Yale University in 1936 at the age of 18, with a bachelor's degree in history and economics, being a member of Elihu. Three years later, he graduated Magna cum Laude from Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal.

Career[edit] Following his graduation, he clerked for Judge Charles Clark for a year before entering private practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

During World War II, he worked briefly for the Lend-Lease Administration, later enlisting in the U.S. Army and becoming an intelligence analyst. In 1962, he co-founded the Washington, D.C. based law firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, specializing in international law and public policy. He also co-chaired the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, formed at the request of President John F. Kennedy.

White House[edit] He served as the White House Counsel to President Jimmy Carter, whom he met first while both served on the Trilateral Commission. He served as a special counsel and consultant to the president on the ratification of SALT II and other international matters.

In 1994, President Clinton was looking for a new lawyer as Bernard Nussbaum had resigned, so he decided to hire Lloyd Cutler under unusual terms. He got to remain as counsel at his firm and counsel private clients as long as their interests did not conflict with those of the government, a first for a White House Counsel. Thus, he also served as counsel in President Clinton's administration.

He came into National news as a result of the Whitewater investigations and Lewinsky scandal. He went on PBS's News Hour on Feb. 6, 1998 and defended President Clinton as the Lewinsky investigation started, saying, "the 37 visits that Monica Lewinsky was supposed to have made, according to waive records. I understand that's a gross exaggeration of the number that show up on the waive records," along with other complaints about the investigations.

On his work in Washington: "This is an excitement to us, a feeling of being in on it, and whichever part of the Washington milieu we come from, we want to play a part. That's why we're here."

Intelligence Commission[edit] On February 6, 2004, Lloyd Cutler was appointed to the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent panel tasked with investigating U.S. intelligence surrounding the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Personal[edit] On May 8, 2005, he died at his home in Washington, D.C. due to complications of a broken hip. He was survived by his wife, Polly Kraft, his sister Laurel Cutler and four children. Two of his children are practicing lawyers and one, Bev Cutler, is a retired Alaska state superior court judge.[1]