GARZA CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
shakes her head and laughs. “I don’t think
my parents really got what the heck I was
doing. All they knew was I was always busy,
and I was always tired.”
Says Heyer of Garza on the way up, “She
made a point of attending going-away
parties for staff. It’s a small thing, but it
speaks to her respect for everyone and her
ability to make those around her feel their
contributions matter.”
During her first stint at the DOJ, between
1984 and 1985, three words struck fear in
the heart of the American workforce: Made
in Japan. “There was a concern in the 1980s
that U.S. antitrust laws were being enforced
in a way that made it hard for U.S. companies
to compete on a worldwide basis with
Japanese and other companies. So it was a
time of transition for antitrust enforcement.”
Garza became involved in revising the
U.S. merger guidelines. She gained a
wealth of knowledge from the introspective
examination. She also learned a lot about
government by working on major cases.
The Consolidated Rail Corporation, or
Conrail, for example, had been formed
a decade earlier when the U.S. took over
bankrupt rail lines to keep the trains
running. By the mid ’80s the rail lines
had become profitable again, and private
companies were vying to take them over.
“[Working on Conrail] allowed me to see
how things worked at the executive branch
level,” says Garza, “because we worked a lot
with the Department of Transportation, which
was led by then-Secretary of Transportation
[Elizabeth] Dole. I actually was able to observe
her close-up in meetings and watch her
testimony and work with her. Liddy Dole was a
very strong woman, very highly respected, and
there weren’t that many women lawyers with
her status at the time. She had certainty and
she was decisive, but she was never harsh and
she was very gracious.”
Flexibility was a requirement to be
effective at the DOJ. The issues that
came before her were often politically
sensitive and backed by stakeholders who
were vested in furthering their own party
agendas. She had to find the common
thread that would bind both sides together.
“It’s unusual in that you’ve got this
potential divide between the political and
the nonpolitical staff,” she says. “So how
do you make things work so everybody is
pulling the same train?”
She managed. “The amazing thing
about her is that she listens and is willing
to change her mind,” says Heyer. “Most
lawyers make up their minds and cannot
be counted on to modify or change
them much in response to new facts
or arguments. She was always pretty
transparent as to what she was thinking
and what kind of information might be
needed to persuade her about things. It
certainly makes people feel that they’ve
been heard and are part of the process.”
It is unusual that a case will cross Garza’s
desk for which she cannot find a solution
that is amenable to all parties involved.
Barnett cites one instance in which Garza
was brought into a case late where the DOJ
and the companies involved were headed
toward litigation. “As Deb always does, she
immediately identified the key issues in the
transaction,” says Barnett. “She understood
what was important to the agency and was
able to educate the clients in a way so they
could restructure what they were doing
and the way that they were doing it. The
transaction had been headed into a fight, but
within a matter of just two or three weeks of
her getting involved, discussions were back
on track. Soon thereafter, the parties were
able to proceed with their transaction under
an approach that assured the agency that
the transaction would not harm consumers.”
WHEN THE GOVERNMENT BROKE UP
AT&T into seven regional Bell companies
in 1982, that landmark decision laid the
groundwork for what would take up most
of Garza’s time during her second stint at
DOJ, from 1988 to 1989.
“At that time,” says Garza, “there was
no cable, there was no wireless; there
was just the phone line into your house.
The notion was that the local telephone
companies had a bottleneck monopoly,
and the thought was that we should
divorce the Bell operating companies from
the long-distance company.” This, the DOJ
accomplished, resulting in the multiple-carrier system we use today.
By 2004, the government turned its
attention to the Internet. The Web had
been around for more than a decade,
and questions had been raised as to
whether antitrust policy and enforcement
needed to be changed to account for
new technology changes. So an Antitrust
Modernization Commission was formed to
make recommendations on how to apply
antitrust law to new high-tech products
and systems. One-third of the 12-member
panel was appointed by the president,
one-third by the Senate and one-third by
the House. Without a strong and unifying
leader to chair the panel, the bipartisan
commission would fail. So President
George W. Bush called on Garza.
“Everybody said, ‘I feel sorry for
you because this is going to be highly
contentious and it’s not going to work.’ I
didn’t want to go into it with that attitude,
so I actually did a very Deb thing and I
bought a lot of books on how to build
consensus,” she says.
Jonathan Yarowsky, partner at Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, was then
the AMC vice-chair. “Where I think we
really benefited from her leadership was
her vast experience,” says Yarowsky. “Her
perspective is so well-rounded about the
larger issues of competition policy and the
intersection of antitrust laws with other
areas of law. Antitrust can be construed
small or writ large, and Deb had the ability
to do both.”
After three years, the AMC produced
a 449-page report on antitrust reform
that recommended a revised system for
antitrust litigation, new policies for mergers
and more effective means to enforce those
policies to compete effectively in domestic
and global markets.
“I don’t think anyone on the commission
was shy. They had strong views,” says
Garza. “There was a little bit of sparring
in the beginning, but it was obvious
that everybody wanted the same thing:
something they could be proud of.”
She believes antitrust enforcement on
the whole has been largely nonpartisan.
“The AMC report supports that,” she
says.“ [Assistant Attorney General for
antitrust] Bill Baer also agreed with that
assessment in a recent speech he gave in
New York. That does not mean there has
not been difference in rhetoric. There has.
And Republicans and Democrats may
also differ with respect to their faith in the
benefit of government intervention. But
their objectives—to protect the integrity of
the competitive process—are the same.”
