member of the staff. She introduced him to the man she would marry in 1975, Bill Clinton. White House Counsel under President Clinton In 1993, Nussbaum again left his law firm, when he was appointed Counsel to the President of the United States. During his tenure as President Bill Clinton's first White House Counsel he was involved in major personnel and policy issues facing the administration. These included the appointment of Janet Reno as Attorney General, the recruitment of a new FBI director, and the selection of approximately 100 federal judges, including Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was also involved in handling the early stages of the Whitewater controversy, an investigation into an unsuccessful Arkansas real estate investment made by the Clintons years earlier, and the investigation of the suicide of his deputy, Vincent Foster. Contrary to the advice of others on the White House staff, in the administration, and in Congress, Nussbaum strongly urged the President not to seek the appointment of an independent counsel with respect to those matters. He maintained there was no legal basis for such an appointment, as there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the President, either before or after he entered office. He warned the president that the institution of an independent counsel, who is responsible to no one, tends to become an uncontrolled, never ending effort to find wrongdoing even where none exists. He predicted that conservative judges would replace anyone who was appointed by the Attorney General with a choice more to their liking. He predicted the investigation would likely last as long as the President was in office and beyond. Consequently, he argued, despite media and congressional pressure, in addition to their being no legal basis, it also made no political sense to request such an appointment. The President, nonetheless, in response to media and congressional pressure, decided to ask the Attorney General to appoint an independent counsel and she did. A few months later, as predicted by Nussbaum, three appellate judges replaced the counsel appointed by the Attorney General with Ken Starr. An investigation then took place which never resulted in criminal charges against the President, but lasted for over seven years, until after the end of the Clinton presidency. It did, however, result, based on subsequent personal conduct (involving a White House intern) separate from the Whitewater matter, in Clinton