WASHINGTON; John Podesta's last day at the White House

 

 President Obama today loses one of his senior advisers, as John Podesta ends his tenure as counselor to the president. Podesta has spent just over a year in the job and is reported ready to help Hillary Clinton launch

her 2016 presidential campaign.

At the Obama White House, Podesta took special interest in climate and energy matters, though reporters were told he recused himself from the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline, of which he was known to be an aggressive opponent before taking the White House post. Even so, Mr. Obama is poised to veto the pipeline construction bill approved this week by Congress. 

Podesta said his "biggest feat" at the White House was the president's expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands monument, an area of the Pacific off-limits to commercial use, now twice the size of Texas. "That's a lot of happy sea turtles.