Campside Media.
From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous.
I'm Finneasai Grigoriatus, and you're listening to Episode 2 of The Body Man.
I'm here with my co-host Gabriel Sherman, who went deep into Clinton World Drama.
He got the first major interview with Bill Clinton's right-hand man, Doug Band.
If you haven't heard episode 1 yet, go back and listen to it now.
So when we left off, Doug had just orchestrated Bill Clinton's secret trip to North Korea
to rescue an imprisoned journalist.
Doug was on top of the world, hobnaming with shakes, billionaires, prime ministers,
celebrities, rumor-hotted he even dated supermodel Naomi Campbell.
But then came the 2008 election.
Hillary was running in the primaries against Barack Obama.
Bill was on the campaign trail, just loving his place in the spotlight again.
And that's when the empire that Doug Band had built for himself began to unravel.
So let's talk about the 2008 election for a second and how that all went down with Doug Band, Hillary.
Because things were not all right.
You talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader.
I did not mention his name.
You're holding it.
Well, I'm here.
He's not.
Well, I can't tell who I'm on here again sometimes.
So as Doug tells it, it was a disaster that Hillary ran for president.
You might think, oh, your wife is running for president.
It's going to only increase your power.
But from Doug's point of view, it was only going to drag Bill Clinton back into the swamp
of partisan politics.
And he had worked really hard to get Bill Clinton out of politics and into this kind
of vaulted status as a statesman, right?
But Hillary did run for president.
And Bill Clinton is a political animal.
I mean, he loves the horse race.
He loves campaigning.
And once Hillary ran, Bill plunged in like head first and he just had total contempt for
Obama.
I think he like resented that Obama was a former state senator who had been in the US
Senate for what two years when he ran for president.
You know, Bill Clinton was a governor of Arkansas.
He had run for president twice.
And just, you know, he felt like he had earned his place.
And so he took insanely, Bill Clinton took it on the role as Hillary's attack dog.
It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior
judgment.
When you said in 2004, there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and
you took that speech you're now running on off your website.
This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
He would go out and do like the scathing interviews about Obama, which is totally not
the role of like the spouse of a, that's like the job of the flack or like, just like
dragged Clinton back into the muck and newspaper started writing about all of the money he
was making at the foundation.
It looked like maybe people were trying to buy access to a future Hillary administration.
And it just undid, you know, Doug was watching this like with horror because it was just
undoing all of the work he had done.
I mean, Doug told me this kind of amazing little nugget about how when Clinton left
the White House, Doug negotiated these sit down meetings with Richard Melinskafe, Roger
Ailes, Chris Ruddy, who is running Newsmax.
I mean, Chris Ruddy wrote a book about how Hillary Clinton maybe killed Vince Foster,
right?
Yeah.
And then Bill Clinton is like having a private lunch with Chris Ruddy and then Chris Ruddy
becomes a donor to the Clinton foundation.
So like from Doug's point of view, he neutralized the vast right links conspiracy, as Hillary
said, against Bill.
Right.
And then finally Bill is just back into being this like democratic partisan.
Yeah, he's back in his old like mold.
Yeah.
And Hillary, you know, is just like red meat for those people.
Yeah.
There's no way that they can fully move on, right?
From a talking car.
And then it never really, I mean, that was sort of the beginning of the end of Clinton
world because then, you know, when Hillary became Secretary of State, the Obama White
House imposed all of these restrictions on Bill Clinton's fundraising and what speeches
he could give because it looked, it would look like, you know, people are trying to
buy access to the State Department, even though, let's say they say it's complete church and
state, like just the optics are terrible.
Like you give Bill Clinton a million dollars to give a speech for 20 minutes.
Like it looks like you're just trying to get in with Hillary.
And then when Hillary Clinton resigned from the Obama White House and decided to go into
the private sector, she moves to New York and suddenly, you know, Doug is caught between
Bill and Hillary and now Chelsea.
And now Chelsea and Hillary are going to clean things up.
Yeah.
A lot of people sort of, you know, do the transactional thing, but few do it with some
of the richest people in the world.
So Chelsea comes to the foundation and she's like, I'm going to clean this place up and
Doug's like, clean it up.
I was there.
We built him into an incredible global phenomenon.
Yeah.
This is what I think came to the world.
And now that, you know, Hillary got some shit during her campaign, like you're taking
a high, I know it was just like levels of hypocrisy.
They all thought the other were more corrupt than themselves.
And that's just like, it's never going to end well.
With Chelsea and Hillary back in the fold, the stage was set for a confrontation between
the man who helped build an empire and the family he was supposed to be building it for.
That's after the break.
We all have questions that keep us up at night.
The self-help industry tells us they have answers.
As a journalist and a skeptic, I'm not so sure.
So I've set out to talk to people who have gone to radical links to find answers.
I'm Catherine Roland.
From something else in Sony Music Entertainment, this is Seeking.
On season one, we're diving deep into the portal of plant medicine and psychedelics.
Listen to Seeking, wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to infamous from campsite media.
So the Civil War is basically Chelsea vs. Doug.
Old Bill is represented by Doug.
So Doug sort of thinks of Chelsea as jealous of him.
Oh yeah.
Right?
He like, in Doug's mind, which I thought so interesting, in Doug's mind, he's the surrogate
son that Bill Clinton never had.
So he's got this pride of place.
And Chelsea, to him, is not only the sort of gawky 13-year-old that she was when she
went into the White House, but she is not self-made.
People like Doug look at Chelsea and they just see a rich girl who's totally lost.
She went to McKinsey for a little while.
Then she went to grad school and then she worked at a hedge fund.
And now she's writing children's books.
Doug felt like this is just your latest little gambit.
I believe in sort of the building yourself and being self-made.
And I think when someone like Chelsea came on the scene and the decisions and how everyone
was scared of her and did what she wanted.
Doug is quoted as writing that Chelsea was a spoiled brat kid.
He says she's acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues
to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has
a lack of focus in her life.
And it just put on to the record, like in vivid display, like how petty and ruthless
and personal this conflict had become.
And then you add a layer to this is that he thought that Bill Clinton basically out of
guilt for his infidelities and fucking up their marriage, let Chelsea have whatever
she wanted, you know, gave her millions of dollars for an apartment and let her come back
to the foundation.
And there's this amazing scene in the piece where Doug has dinner with Clinton in Dubai.
They're on some, you know, some business trip.
Oh, yeah.
Not remunerated, of course.
I mean, when you go to Dubai, it's really never about the money.
And that Doug tells Clinton to his face that Bill was allowing Chelsea to destroy Doug's
reputation because deep down Bill was guilty for cheating on Hillary and causing Chelsea
so much pain.
And then Doug said the unsayable, which is, I mean, this is like if you were writing
the movie, it's incredible.
He would say that if Bill wants to have girlfriends, just divorce Hillary, like just there's no
harm in that.
But like staying in this marriage and like feeling guilty and throwing money at your
daughter, that's not the honorable thing to do.
And that's like, that's where the relationship was irreparable.
I think one thing that the, the Doug Bann story shows is that it was when the dynasty was
clear that it was running out.
Like everyone was just sort of looking out for themselves, right?
It's just like, you know, pigs at the trough.
Like let me just get mine.
Texas Ranger James Holland is a legendary interrogator.
They call him the serial killer whisperer.
And that's why they asked me to come in because I'm special.
When Ranger Holland persuades Air Force that Larry Driscoll to confess to murdering a woman,
it's just another case closed for the super cub.
Or so it seems.
Law enforcement, I was always taught to trust him.
They're there to help you.
But now that's a totally different ball game.
Now shocking interrogation tapes reveal how the Ranger really operates.
I've never seen anything like it.
It's one of the most troubling interviews I've ever heard.
You do something for me?
What's that?
Say I'm sorry.
Oh, why?
Just say it.
Just say I'm sorry.
From something else, The Marshall Project and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smoke
Screen.
Just say you're sorry.
Listen and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music Stitcher, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
This is Infamous from Campside Media.
In Dubai, Doug Band had finally drawn a line in the sand with Bill Clinton.
Doug told him that he essentially had to choose between him or his wife and daughter.
It was an ultimatum that had been years in the making.
And if it all went down the way we think it did, it was an objectively dumb ultimatum
at that.
Of course Bill sided with his family.
And Doug was now on his way out.
And that was definitely Tom in the water for a journalist like Gabe.
I got a call out of the blue from a friend of Doug Band's with a Democratic operative
who said that basically there's this untold story of how Doug Band had this sideline career
as a freelance hostage negotiator and that he had done all these things, had gotten several
high profile Americans released from really horrible circumstances abroad, got them out
of jail and returned home.
And no one had known about it.
And it was just this really cool story of this powerful guy in New York who was on the
side playing James Bond.
I was like, okay, that's an interesting story.
Well, we need to really tell the story of who Doug Band is.
And Doug really did not want to revisit his years with Bill Clinton.
He had kind of psychologically and professionally moved on.
But over time I said, listen, I can't write this story about your work as a hostage
negotiator without the context of how you got that power.
I mean, the only reason you know who to call in the foreign ministry of such country is
because you met them through Bill Clinton.
Right.
So I mean, Doug, sometimes he forgets how he ended up there, like almost like by his
own.
Like, no, you weren't elected president.
You were like the guy carrying the president's bag.
Yeah, it's very all about he is.
Yeah.
So the first meeting was in his office at Teneo, which I was struck by because for someone
who had so much bottled up animosity towards the Clintons, his office was a shrine to Bill
Clinton.
Like, it looks like a wing of Bill Clinton's presidential library.
There's like these just like glamour photos of Bill Clinton meeting Bono and Bill Clinton
meeting, you know, Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton meeting Tony Blick.
You got to use what you got.
I mean, that's the...
And you know what's great is like in these photos you see like off camera like in the
corner, like there's Doug.
It's like, what's that children's book where it's walled up?
Yeah, yeah.
I feel like playing like, where's Doug in these photos?
He's just the guy who's like off camera, but is there for every fucking meeting.
And so it was like this really kind of awkward conversation because Doug had never done this
before.
Like he...
And I take him at his word.
Like he really had never sat with a reporter and started to talk about himself.
Like in a real way.
Like he'd been a background source for countless people.
When you think about all the scandals of Clinton's post presidency, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein
or the foundation or what have you, you know, Doug Band was the symbol of that.
And I would take a closer look at the man who essentially rebuilt a former president's
brand after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment.
Doug Band taking credit for generating money for Bill Clinton by arranging paid speeches
and leveraging contacts with corporations that donate to the Clinton Foundation.
And so I think he had never given any interviews, I think, partly because the mystique is what
gave him power.
It was awkward and stilted and at first he didn't really want to talk about the Clintons
and I think the first conversation was even on background and just to get to know each
other and it just developed from there.
There one final rupture between you two or is just a slow drifting apart between you
and Bill.
No.
No, he and I are always fine.
Yeah.
It's not that our relationship will be fine.
Yeah.
I really try to avoid him.
So it really took a long time and then it's just snowballed and I think it was obviously
I can't speak for him but just my sense of being in the room with him.
It was cathartic, I think.
What's your relationship like the bill these days?
Talked to him in years.
Really?
Years.
Many, many years.
I mean it was my life for almost 20 years so it's not like, you know, I don't run away
from it or run towards it.
I'm totally out of politics.
I have nothing to do with it.
So when I talked to a friend of mine who is a guy in politics, he said his first thought
when he read the piece was holy shit and then his second thought was why the hell did Doug
Band do this?
Like why did he do this?
Like what was the play?
Teneo, the public relations firm and strategy firm he founded was valued at like 700 million
dollars.
He was fabulously wealthy and I think had the kind of money where he could do what he
wanted.
That was a strategy per se other than like, you know, if Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton
hated him after this, like he didn't need them anymore.
I think also partly what I saw in writing this piece was that it was kind of the end
of Clinton world because Doug Band didn't fear the repercussions of the Clintons after
this and that really to me was a symbol of like he's such a student of power.
If he's not scared of the Clintons anymore, like they're not relevant in terms of their
ability to like shape politics and business and culture.
Yeah, yeah.
Like it was to me it was a little bit like an obituary Clinton world.
Nothing to do with the whole world.
It was a great, like the best thing that ever happened to me leaving there I will show
it addicted sooner.
If you didn't quite hear that, that's Doug Band saying he has nothing to do with that
world anymore and the best thing to happen was him leaving it.
And then what was really fascinating was like months into the interviews we started emailing
and I started like writing him questions on email and he would just write these multi-paragraph
responses.
It was almost like he was writing a memoir, right?
Like I was drawing out these memories he had.
And so that went on for a while and then what happened after that in terms of the reporting?
And what happened was the piece came out and I never heard from him again.
Okay, well I mean something also happened to him.
Oh yeah, that's right.
Yes, he did leave.
He left his job at Tenao and I think he had already been sort of checked out.
I think partly he was doing this piece because he was not that involved day to day.
I don't think he wanted to leave the company by any means but yeah he left.
Yeah, it was very sudden.
So yeah, so six days after the story comes out, Doug leaves Tenao and I haven't heard
from him since.
So when you do a D as you know of an SNO, when you do like a deep dive profile, it's
kind of like, it's really weird afterwards because it's like so intimate.
But the relationship is not close.
Like we're not friends.
So then the other thing my friend said is he was like, you fucking blew this entire
bridge up and the clients of Tenao are like, these are not great guys, right?
These are like oil company guys.
Yeah, chemical CEOs.
Right exactly.
And they were like, wait a second.
What does this guy know about us?
Exactly.
Like if he's going to throw like a former president under the bus, what's he going to
say about us down the line?
I know.
I mean it is, it is like, that's the double edged sword of getting to being the like
advisor to the king is that you know all the secrets but the minute you share the secrets,
you're out.
The mistake Doug made is like you at the end of the day when you're in a family business
and the Clinton, Clinton world is a family business.
Family is going to win every single time.
The idea that he could go up against Chelsea and try to drive a wedge between Bill and
his daughter is like, that is a little bit of the tragedy of Doug band because it's the,
it's such a fundamental misreading of power, right?
This is a guy that climbed to the pinnacle of the entire world power industrial complex
because he knew how these relationships worked but the one relationship that mattered most
with Bill, he couldn't even figure out.
I mean, it's such a blind spot.
Such a blind spot.
Infamous is created, executive produced and hosted by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa
Gregoriatis.
Shoshish Malvitz is our managing producer and editor and this episode was produced by
Rajiv Gola.
Production support by Grace Heurman, Willie Houston Smith and Natalie Robamed.
David Devarro is our sound designer.
E1 Lai Tramun is our recordist.
Doug Band spoke with Gabe for a Vanity Fair magazine feature where some of this reporting
appeared but he was not interviewed again for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening.
See you next week.
♪ ♪