A Friendship Dating to 1976 Resonates in 2012
By Michael Barbaro
New York Times
April 7, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/politics/mitt-romney-and-benjamin-netanyahu-are-old-friends.html

The two young men had woefully little in common: one was
a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class
Jew from Israel.

But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin
Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the
16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where
both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the
most formative time of their careers, they sized each
other up during the firm's weekly brainstorming
sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view
of the world.

That shared experience decades ago led to a warm
friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now rich
with political intrigue. Mr. Netanyahu, the prime
minister of Israel, is making the case for military
action against Iran as Mr. Romney, the likely Republican
presidential nominee, is attacking the Obama
administration for not supporting Mr. Netanyahu more
robustly.

The relationship between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Romney -
nurtured over meals in Boston, New York and Jerusalem,
strengthened by a network of mutual friends and
heightened by their conservative ideologies - has
resulted in an unusually frank exchange of advice and
insights on topics like politics, economics and the
Middle East.

When Mr. Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, Mr.
Netanyahu offered him firsthand pointers on how to
shrink the size of government. When Mr. Netanyahu wanted
to encourage pension funds to divest from businesses
tied to Iran, Mr. Romney counseled him on which American
officials to meet with. And when Mr. Romney first ran
for president, Mr. Netanyahu presciently asked him
whether he thought Newt Gingrich would ever jump into
the race.

Only a few weeks ago, on Super Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu
delivered a personal briefing by telephone to Mr. Romney
about the situation in Iran.

"We can almost speak in shorthand," Mr. Romney said in
an interview. "We share common experiences and have a
perspective and underpinning which is similar."

Mr. Netanyahu attributed their "easy communication" to
what he called "B.C.G.'s intellectually rigorous boot
camp."

"So despite our very different backgrounds," he said
through an aide, "my sense is that we employ similar
methods in analyzing problems and coming up with
solutions for them."

The ties between Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu stand out
because there is little precedent for two politicians of
their stature to have such a history together that
predates their entry into government. And that history
could well influence decision-making at a time when the
United States may face crucial questions about whether
to attack Iran's nuclear facilities or support Israel in
such an action.

Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any
significant policy decisions about Israel without
consulting Mr. Netanyahu - a level of deference that
could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu's polarizing
reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives
and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective
of Israel.

In a telling exchange during a debate in December, Mr.
Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging
remark about Palestinians, declaring: "Before I made a
statement of that nature, I'd get on the phone to my
friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: `Would it help if I say
this? What would you like me to do?' "

Martin S. Indyk, a United States ambassador to Israel in
the Clinton administration, said that whether
intentional or not, Mr. Romney's statement implied that
he would "subcontract Middle East policy to Israel."

"That, of course, would be inappropriate," he added.

Mr. Netanyahu insists that he is neutral in the
presidential election, but he has at best a fraught
relationship with President Obama. For years, the prime
minister has skillfully mobilized many Jewish groups and
Congressional Republicans to pressure the Obama
administration into taking a more confrontational
approach against Iran.

"To the extent that their personal relationship would
give Netanyahu entree to the Romney White House in a way
that he doesn't now have to the Obama White House," Mr.
Indyk said, "the prime minister would certainly consider
that to be a significant advantage."

It was a quirk of history that the two men met at all.
In the 1970s, both chose to attend business school in
Boston - Harvard for Mr. Romney, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for Mr. Netanyahu. After
graduating near the top of their classes, they had their
pick of jobs at the nation's biggest and most
prestigious consulting firms.

The Boston Consulting Group did not yet qualify as
either. Its founder, Bruce D. Henderson, was considered
brilliant but idiosyncratic; his unorthodox theories -
about measuring a company's success by its market share,
and dividing businesses into categories like "cash cows"
and "dogs" - were then regarded as outside the
mainstream of corporate consulting.

As Mr. Romney recalled, the faculty and students at
Harvard Business School routinely mocked the firm's
recruitment posters. "Boston Consulting was at the time
a firm that seemed somewhat under siege," he said.

But the company's status as a pioneering upstart,
nipping on the heels of bigger blue-chip firms like
McKinsey and Booz Allen, fostered a deep camaraderie
among its young employees, who traveled around the
country advising clients like General Foods and the Mead
Corporation.

Even in a firm of 100 M.B.A.'s, Mr. Romney and Mr.
Netanyahu managed to stand apart, as much for their
biography as for their brainpower. Mr. Romney's father,
a former governor of Michigan, had sought the Republican
presidential nomination a few years earlier. Mr.
Netanyahu had his own exotic résumé: he had just
completed a tour of duty in an elite special forces unit
of the Israeli military.

"Both clearly had an aura around them," said Alan Weyl,
who worked at the firm from 1975 to 1989.

Although they never worked closely on a project
together, Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu, competitive by
nature, left deep impressions on each other, which
appear to have only grown.

Mr. Romney, never known for his lack of self-confidence,
still recalls the sense of envy he felt watching Mr.
Netanyahu effortlessly hold court during the firm's
Monday morning meetings, when consultants presented
their work and fielded questions from their colleagues.
The sessions were renowned for their sometimes grueling
interrogations.

"He was a strong personality with a distinct point of
view," Mr. Romney said. "I aspired to the same kind of
perspective."

Over dinner years later, aides said, Mr. Netanyahu would
reveal the depth of his own scorekeeping, when he
quipped, with mostly playful chagrin, that Mr. Romney
had been "Henderson's favorite."

"His star," the prime minister said of Mr. Romney's time
at Boston Consulting, "had already risen."

Mr. Romney worked at the company from 1975 to 1977; Mr.
Netanyahu was involved from 1976 to 1978. But a month
after Mr. Netanyahu arrived, he returned to Israel to
start an antiterrorism foundation in memory of his
brother, an officer killed while leading the hostage
rescue force at Entebbe, Uganda. An aide said he
sporadically returned to the company over the rest of
that two-year period.

Mr. Romney later decamped to Bain & Company, a rival of
Boston Consulting. They did, however, maintain a
significant link: at Bain, Mr. Romney worked closely
with Fleur Cates, Mr. Netanyahu's second wife. (Ms.
Cates and Mr. Netanyahu divorced in the mid-1980s, but
she remains in touch with Mr. Romney.)

The men reconnected shortly after 2003 when Mr. Romney
became the governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Netanyahu paid
him a visit, eager to swap tales of government life.

Mr. Netanyahu, who had recently stepped down as Israel's
finance minister, regaled Mr. Romney with stories of
how, in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher, he had challenged unionized workers over
control of their pensions, reduced taxes and privatized
formerly government-run industries, reducing the role of
government in private enterprise.

He encouraged Mr. Romney to look for ways to do the
same. As Mr. Romney recalled, Mr. Netanyahu told him of
a favorite memory from basic training about a soldier
trying to race his comrades with a fat man atop his
shoulders. Naturally, he loses.

"Government," Mr. Romney recalled him saying, "is the
guy on your shoulders."

As governor, Mr. Romney said, he frequently repeated the
story to the heads of various agencies, reminding them
that their job as regulators was to "catch the bad guys,
but also to encourage the good guys and to make business
more successful in our state."

A few years later, Mr. Romney had dinner with Mr.
Netanyahu at a private home in the Jewish quarter of the
Old City, in central Jerusalem, where the two spent
hours discussing the American and Israeli economies.
When Mr. Netanyahu informed Mr. Romney of a personal
campaign to persuade American pension funds to divest
from businesses tied to Iran, Mr. Romney offered up his
Rolodex.

Before he left Israel, Mr. Romney set up several
meetings with government officials in the United States
for his old colleague. "I immediately saw the wisdom of
his thinking," Mr. Romney said.

Back in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney sent out letters to
legislators requesting that the public pension funds
they controlled sell off investments from corporations
doing business with Iran.

Even as Mr. Netanyahu, a keen and eager student of
American politics, has tried to avoid any hint of
favoritism in the presidential election, friends say he
has paid especially close attention to Mr. Romney's
political fortunes in this campaign season.

And the prime minister keeps open lines of communication
to the candidate. When it was Mr. Gingrich's turn to
leap to the top of the polls, Mr. Netanyahu was startled
in January by an article exploring why Sheldon Adelson,
a billionaire casino executive and outspoken supporter
of Israel, was devoting millions of dollars to back Mr.
Gingrich. It described Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Adelson as
close friends.

Mr. Netanyahu's office quickly relayed a message to a
senior Romney adviser, Dan Senor: the prime minister had
played no role in Mr. Adelson's decision to bankroll a
Romney rival.

___________________________________________

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