Personnel News

CQ (12/6, Graham-Silverman) reported Rep.-elect Timothy V. Johnson (R- IL) “has tapped Jerry Clarke as his chief of staff.” Erick Gustafson is “the director of the new Center for Consumer Choice, a part of Citizens for a Sound

Economy (CSE), which advocates for limited government and free enterprise.” Shelley Fidler, “most recently principal deputy to the White House Climate Change Task Force, has joined the Washington law firm Van Ness Feldman.” Former congressional aide John DiBiase “has joined Widmeyer Communications as a senior associate.” Widmeyer “also welcomes Robert Caruano and Lydia Pelliccia as senior associates.” Judy Sarasohn and Dan Morgan wrote in their Washington Post (12/7) column, “Paul Bledsoe, director of communications at the White House Climate Change Task Force, is leaving this week to join Fenton Communications as senior vice president. Heading up the public interest communications shop is Maggie Williams, who used to be Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff.” The Post continued, “As for an earlier refugee of the Clinton administration . Lawrence Haas, a former spokesman for Vice President Gore, National Journal reporter and most recently director of public affairs at Yale University, is signing on with the PR company Manning, Selvage & Lee as senior vice president and director of public affairs, effective Jan. 1” The Washington Post (12/7, Mufson) reported, “J. Stapleton Roy, the high-ranking U.S. diplomat who resigned last week after Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright suspended his deputy over security lapses, has taken a job as managing director of Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm founded by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.”