Meet John F. W. Rogers, Goldman’s Quiet Power Player

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In this regard, Rogers appears to have internalized an aphorism that his hero and former boss, Ronald Reagan, had on a small plaque in the Oval Office: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.” Rogers serves on the board of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission and is treasurer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library. He also helped organize Reagan’s state funeral and gave $250,000 to help underwrite the cost of the Reagan statue that stands in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Within Goldman, though, he rarely discusses politics, his personal life, or what he did before arriving at the firm in 1994. A Goldman partner, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about Rogers’s motivations, says invisibility is part of a master plan in which Rogers hopes to achieve absolute deniability.

This deniability is not always used for benign purposes. After Paulson announced his departure from Goldman in June 2006, Rogers, according to a former senior Goldman executive close to him, led a brief push to prevent Blankfein, Paulson’s chosen successor, from filling Paulson’s roles as both CEO and chairman of the board. A Bloomberg News report at the time noted that “some board members” considered “naming a separate chairman” such as Stephen Friedman, the former senior partner at Goldman who had been an M&A guy, to complement Blankfein’s sales and trading background. The same former executive says Rogers is so good that Blankfein didn’t even know that Rogers was behind it. Blankfein concedes as much. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me that John would’ve initiated that,” he says. “But I’m not in a position to deny it. I just don’t know.” Van Praag, the Goldman spokesman, says Rogers was not the person who suggested splitting the roles and that “John flatly denies having suggested the idea to anyone.”

Given his preference for invisibility, it’s no surprise that Rogers declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story. Many of the dozen or so friends and colleagues who did agree to be interviewed pointed out that Rogers’s absence from a profile about himself is typical. Several noted that their inability to speak on the record for fear of reprisal is a perfect example of how Rogers doesn’t need recognition to be powerful. One former Goldman colleague, after conceding that he’s afraid of Rogers, added that Rogers has an old-school sense of omertà. If wronged, his vengeance can kill careers.

When David Gergen arrived at the White House in 1975 as director of communications to President Gerald R. Ford, he found his Old Executive Office Building office empty. A bureaucrat told him he could speak with the General Services Administration and wait two months to get a chair or he could call John Rogers.

Rogers was then an 18-year-old student at George Washington University with an internship in the White House’s speechwriting and research office. Gergen called Rogers, and the next day he had a desk, a couch, a TV, and some artwork. Gergen was so impressed that he asked Rogers to be his research assistant while Rogers remained in college. “He became a legend within the White House,” says Gergen, who claims credit for discovering “the phenomenon of John Rogers.”

It’s now almost impossible to imagine Rogers outside of Wall Street or the Beltway, but he was not born to power. He was raised in Seneca Falls, N.Y., near the Finger Lakes, where his father owned a wholesale frozen foods business and his mother was a dental hygienist. Throughout high school, Rogers worked in the family business as a salesman. But his passion was politics, as it’s played inside the Beltway. Thanks in part to a scholarship from his high school, Rogers attended George Washington. After meeting Gergen, his career path was set.