Kenneth Duberstein

Duberstein was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the son of Jewel (Falb), a teacher, and Aaron Duberstein, a fundraiser for the Boy Scouts of America.[1][2][3] He graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School and Franklin and Marshall College (A.B. 1965) and American University (M.A. 1966). He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Franklin and Marshall in 1989. While in college he was a member of Zeta Beta Tau.[4]

Duberstein began his public service on Capitol Hill as an intern for Sen. Jacob K. Javits.[1] His other early government service included Deputy Under Secretary of Labor during the Gerald Ford Administration and Director of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the U.S. General Services Administration.

Between his White House appointments in the Reagan administration, he was also Vice President and Director of Business-Government Relations of the Committee for Economic Development and Vice President of lobbying firm Timmons & Company.[5]

During Reagan's two terms in office, he served as White House Chief of Staff (1988–1989), as well as both the Assistant and the Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs (1981–83). Duberstein is said to be the first Jewish person to be White House Chief of Staff (although Hamilton Jordan's maternal grandmother was Jewish). Prior to 1987, he also served on the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. He was succeeded in that position by Betty Heitman, the co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee from 1983 to 1987.[6]

In January 1989, Duberstein was awarded the President's Citizens Medal by President Reagan.[7] He was the chairman of the Ethics Committee for the U.S. Olympic Committee and served as vice chairman of the independent Special Bid Oversight Reform Commission for the U.S. Olympics Committee. He also appeared on Bloomberg alongside John Podesta.

Among the boards of directors on which Duberstein served are; The Boeing Company, ConocoPhillips, the Fleming Companies, Inc., and The St. Paul Companies, Inc.[8] He was also on the Board of Governors for the American Stock Exchange and NASD, and served on the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae.[9] He served on the advisory board for Washington, DC based non-profit America Abroad Media.[10][11]

He was also an adviser to former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, according to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who said that Duberstein was a source for David Corn's and Michael Isikoff's book about the Valerie Plame affair in which Armitage was found to be the one who leaked Plame's CIA status to Novak.[12]

Duberstein endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president in the 2008 presidential election. ABC News reported that this came after he sought to be named director of the presidential transition team for Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, but was rebuffed.[13][14][15][16]

Duberstein was hired by Russian authorities, via Goldman Sachs, to lobby against the Magnitsky Bill (as known as the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act), a bill in the U.S. Congress "to impose sanctions on persons responsible for the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, and for other gross violations of human rights in the Russian Federation".[17][18]

In 2013, Duberstein was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage in the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.[19] His position succeeded, as the court would go on to effectively legalize same-sex marriage in California.

Duberstein was married three times, with his first two marriages, to Marjorie Duberstein and Sydney Duberstein, ending in divorce.[1] He was then married to Jacqueline Fain and had four children from a previous marriage.[20][21] He had a history of kidney disease, and in 2014, received a kidney transplant; his son was the donor.[1] After a long illness, Duberstein died at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington on March 2, 2022, at the age of 77.[1][22]

• Appearances on C-SPAN