Howard Berman: The man behind the scenes

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Howard Berman keeps a big Thermos behind his desk. That way, he never has to ask anyone to fetch coffee for him.

The new House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman also picks up his own dry cleaning and drives his own car.

It is a self-sufficiency that Berman has carefully nurtured over his 13 terms in Congress. Now that he has ascended to one of the most influential posts on Capitol Hill, succeeding the late Chairman Tom Lantos, he still rejects the trappings of power, and prefers to keep operating as a behind-the-scenes player. AP in the New York Times.

He even barred an Associated Press photographer from taking his picture for this story.

''Sometimes the best things are done when the media doesn't know about it, because then a lot of other people don't know about it,'' Berman said. ''The media is a conduit of information to the people who wouldn't like what I was doing.''

It's not that Berman has anything to hide, friends say.

''He's much more interested in accomplishing things than being out front and visible,'' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who's known Berman since their college days at the University of California, Los Angeles. They presided over a famously effective Democratic machine in Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s that helped elect like-minded politicians to local and state offices.