Welcome back to the podcast, Bribes, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge and today's guest is the former Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform in the White House under President Obama.

As ethics czar, he helped draft the executive order that limited the influence of lobbyists in that administration.

He later served as Ambassador to the Czech Republic until 2014, and today he has returned as chairman of the board of citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington,

crew, an organization that he co-founded in 2003.

Norm Eisen, thank you for joining me.

Alexandra, thanks for having me.

I'm glad to be on the pod.

It's such a pleasure, Norm.

We first met in Prague in 2011 when you were the ambassador there,

and you hosted an anti-bribery and governance conference.

But to what extent was transparency your own agenda item while you were in Prague?

And to what extent was that driven by the White House?

One of the wonderful things about serving as a United States ambassador is that one gets to have a substantial

agenda setting capacity. And certainly, government transparency, accountability, participation,

what we refer to as open governance, transparency, accountability,

and participation that go together.

That was a high priority of the Obama administration for its ambassadors abroad.

However, out of the all of the possible issues, I probably took that group of issues and ran with it as much as any U.S. ambassador and more than most.

And that was how I had the pleasure of first making your acquaintance at our Prague World Forum on Governance,

to get good governance, transparency, and anti-corruption, which I hosted after about a year in my job.

And I hosted one of those every year.

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