Alum who served on 9/11 Commission selected as White House counsel to Bush

Posted: Tue, 9 Jan 2007

GETTYSBURG, Pa. - Gettysburg College graduate Fred Fielding, former White House counsel and member of the 9/11 Commission, is returning to the White House to serve as White House counsel. Fielding will replace Harriet Miers. The appointment was made public Jan. 8.

Fielding, class of 1961, went into law and then public service, serving as associate counsel for the Nixon administration and White House counsel for President Ronald Reagan. More recently, he served on the acclaimed National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more commonly known as the 9/11 Commission.

"They need somebody who can sit down face-to-face with an ornery committee chairman and work out a conflict over an oversight request," Bradford A. Berenson, a former associate counsel for Mr. Bush during his first term, said in a Jan. 9 New York Times story.

A member of Gettysburg College's Board of Trustees since 1998, Fielding has served his alma mater as a member of the Commission on the Future and Board of Fellows. In Spring 2005, Fielding delivered the commencement address at Gettysburg College, where he previously received an honorary degree. He graduated from Gettysburg College with a major in political science in 1961, and from the University of Virginia law school in 1964. After working for a law firm in his native Philadelphia, Fielding moved to Washington, D.C., and served as legal counsel for the Nixon administration during the Watergate era and President Reagan. Fielding left the White House in 1986 and became a senior partner at the Wiley, Rein and Fielding law firm.

Fifteen months after Sept. 11, 2001, Fielding stepped back into the national spotlight when he agreed to join the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly referred to as the 9/11 Commission. Labeled the most influential independent commission since the Warren Commission investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 9/11 Commission's final report, released in the summer of 2004, received wide acclaim for its balanced, accessible, unanimous accounting of events and was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction.

The complete story is available at the New York Times' website.

Gettysburg College is a highly selective four-year residential college of liberal arts and sciences. With approximately 2,600 students, it is located on a 200-acre campus adjacent to Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. The college was founded in 1832.

Issued 1/9/07

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