Howard Paster, NAFTA advocate, dies at 66

WASHINGTON -- Howard Paster, an influential lobbyist for unions and big business who was credited with pushing through the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement as President Bill Clinton's chief liaison to Congress, died Wednesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was 66, and had encephalitis.

In a Washington career spanning more than four decades, Paster was a formidable presence on Capitol Hill. He became chief executive at Hill and Knowlton, one of Washington's biggest public relations and government affairs firms, and later was executive vice president of its parent company, the WPP Group.

Paster spent much of his childhood in Nassau County, where his mother worked for the Democratic Party in the overwhelmingly Republican area. Known since college as "Faster Paster" for his hard-driving style, he was a congressional aide before becoming the top Washington lobbyist for the United Auto Workers in the late 1970s.

Howard George Paster was born Dec. 23, 1944, in Brooklyn. Paster met his future wife, Gail Kern, director emeritus of Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, in high school.