Blattner Picked to Head
Anti Microsoft Campaign

(March 11, 1998)  The Department of Justice hired Jeffrey H. Blattner to be a special counsel for information technology, and point man on the Microsoft case.  Blattner is a Ted Kennedy protege with little experience in antitrust litigation, or any other type of legal practice.  However, the 43 year Washington insider is a master of hardball politics, grassroots campaigns, and media relations, and possesses a brilliant and energetic mind.

Blattner is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard law school, where he studied under, and worked for, Professor Laurence Tribe.   He later held the very prestigious position of law clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Blattner joined Senator Ted Kennedy's (D-MA) Judiciary Committee staff in early 1987 and remained until shortly after the Republicans gained a majority after the 1994 elections.  He was one of the main architects of the "Robert Bork's America" strategy which led to the vilification and resounding defeat of Judge Bork.  He was also active in defeating or opposing many other Reagan and Bush federal judicial nominees.

He later briefly worked for Common Cause, a Washington based interest group.

He was admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1981.

Sources:  Ethan Bronner, Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America, Doubleday, 1989.  Martindale Hubbell Legal Directory.