BIRDS IN THE LOBBY

Sightings from The Catbird Seat

~ o ~

October 6, 2006

AGENTS SAY FOLEY SCANDAL
TIP OF ICEBERG

Feds: GOP Lobbyist Abramoff ran Capitol Hill
call-boy sex service at DC hotel

by Tom Flocco, tomflocco.com

Washington—A retired intelligence agency official corroborated the revelations of a national security expert that male and female heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and underage children provided sexual services to numerous congressmen, senators, national media hosts, top military officers and other federal officials who were compromised and made susceptible to blackmail at three Washington, DC hotels since 2000.

The long-time intelligence insider with multiple Capitol Hill sources told TomFlocco.com that convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff operated the sex / spy ring at the Watergate, Ritz-Carlton and Sheraton hotels in Washington, DC. “The whole Republican Party was for sale—the House, Senate and the White House,” said the well-respected federal insider with impeccable and historic intelligence credentials who declined to be named at this time but who is familiar with testimony and sources close to a grand jury probing the GOP lobbyist’s sale of sex in return for legislative influence over taxpayer dollars.

According to Justice Department sources there is email and phone record evidence that White House advisor Karl Rove is linked to the operation of Abramoff’s sex ring according to federal agency sources who spoke with U.S. intelligence authority Thomas Heneghan.

Heneghan added that a grand jury heard several agents testify last April that “the Watergate, Ritz-Carlton and Sheraton Hotels in Washington, DC were used to compromise legislators and news-people with prostitution services, the financing of which is directly linked to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Marc Rich and Abramoff.”

The allegations raise serious questions as to why such testimony was not made public to protect the safety of congressional pages subject to sexual contacts by congressmen or other officials linked to the Abramoff poker party hotel sex ring which has already ensnared convicted former GOP Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-50-CA) who is currently serving a federal prison sentence.

On Wednesday evening CNN Primetime host Nancy Grace interviewed former congressional page Tyson Vivyan who called recently resigned Florida Congressman Mark Foley “sick and depraved” after receiving explicit emails and instant messages asking if he [Vivyan] “would like to perform sex acts on Foley” more than ten years ago when he was sixteen years old.

Heneghan’s executive intelligence network revealed startling allegations that “retiring GOP Senate Majority Leader and Tennessee 2008 presidential candidate William Frist visited the Abramoff hotels,” adding that “Frist is reportedly a close friend of George W. Bush’s Yale Skull and Bones roommate—former Knoxville, Tennessee mayor Victor Ashe—who agents have alleged to be a long-time albeit sporadic Bush 43 consort.”

Heneghan also alleged additional prostitute customers as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former CNN host-reporter Robert Novak, both of whom were allegedly introduced into the sex-ring by GOP reporter and former male prostitute Jeff Gannon.

Gannon visited the Bush White House private living quarters 45 times without the assignations being recorded in visitor logs even though they could be documented by the President’s Secret Service detail, said Heneghan who has yet to be interviewed by mainstream media, according to Heneghan.

Federal agents linked recently resigned Representative Mark Foley (R-16-FL) to Abramoff and Gannon who allegedly acted as “facilitators for the poker parties and an elaborate prostitution ring of pedophiles and extortion-friendly homosexuals-in-the-closet serving elements of the Republican leadership,” he said.

The intelligence expert said FBI investigators are reportedly probing GOP bribery of the family of one alleged congressional page-boy victim who was sexually approached by page predator Foley, having received lurid emails which were eventually publicized widely in the media.

Heneghan said payoff money was allegedly channeled through presidential advisor Karl Rove and Abramoff to induce the congressional page’s silence during the past three years.

Heneghan’s federal agent network also revealed that sources close to the New York Times indicate that GOP congressional leaders including Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-14-IL), House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-8-OH), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-7-MO) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) all helped obstruct justice to cover up the sets of emails incriminating Congressman Foley over a lengthy period of time—and that the Foley email issue was “taken care of.” 

Media reports indicate that most Americans feel that homosexual and lesbian citizens have the same rights to equality, fair treatment and privacy afforded to all Americans; however, Foley’s position as a United States congressman who preyed upon underage congressional page boys crosses the line of criminality which leads many to wonder if more federal legislators will become ensnared in the Abramoff hotel sex ring pedophilia asserted by federal agents….

WMD, poker and pillow talk

While allegations of sex with minors promulgated by the retired intelligence official are scandalous, Heneghan unloaded an explosive charge that the White House bin Laden “terrorist” film footage was produced in Las Vegas by a Paramount subsidiary called Las Vegas Rose Productions and that many of the alleged 9-11 “hijackers” including Mohammed Atta visited Sin City just before the September 11 attacks.

The intelligence authority’s network of agency sources revealed that prosecutors will have interest in reports that “the genesis of the Valerie Plame CIA leak case took place during one of Capitol Hill reporter Robert Novak’s alleged visits with an Abramoff hooker at one of the hotels after a poker party.”

“Photographs of politicians in compromising positions have reportedly already been used as blackmail to silence politicians who would speak the truth about the 2000 Bush-Gore election fraud in Florida, prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks , Iraq—yellowcake—weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and how Abramoff and Netanyahu were the pimps for the sex for influence operation,” said Heneghan.

President Bush emphatically denied that he personally knew Abramoff, despite CIA and Secret Service documents indicating the convicted lobbyist visited the White House 200 times during the first ten months of the Bush presidency—often enough for a personal visit on every business day of each month, according to wide news reports.

Despite the daily White House visits, Bush said “I’ve never sat down with him and had a discussion with the guy,” adding, “I’m also mindful that we live in a world in which those pictures will be used for pure political purposes,” attempting to justify his unwillingness at first to release photos with Abramoff and to account for his false statements.

Heneghan told us the Bush administration wanted Valerie Plame-Wilson’s identity as a CIA official leaked because her intelligence team had identified Israeli Mossad operatives inside Iran who were to receive weapons of mass destruction to be delivered through Turkey and planted in Iraq to further the president’s case for war.

“The financing for these whorehouses is linked directly to AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marc Rich and Jack Abramoff; and the money trail ties back to American International Group (AIG), Hank Greenberg, Leonard Millman and Doug Alexander—former British Minister of E-Commerce,” said Heneghan….

Read the complete story, with photos, at…

www.tomflocco.com/fs/FoleyTipOfIceberg.htm

October 3, 2006

Lincoln Weeps

Bill Moyers, www.tompaine.com

Back in 1954, when I was a summer employee on Capitol Hill, I made my first visit to the Lincoln Memorial. I have returned many times since, most recently while I was in Washington filming for a documentary about how Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, among others, turned the conservative revolution into a racket—the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

If democracy can be said to have temples, the Lincoln Memorial is our most sacred. You stand there silently contemplating the words that gave voice to Lincoln’s fierce determination to save the union—his resolve that “government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

On this latest visit, I was overcome by a sense of melancholy. Lincoln looks out now on a city where those words are daily mocked. This is no longer his city. And those people from all walks of life making their way up the steps to pay their respect to the martyred president—it’s not their city, either. Or their government. This is an occupied city, a company town, and government is a subservient subsidiary of richly endowed patrons.

Once upon a time the House of Representatives was known as “the people’s house.” No more. It belongs to K Street now. That’s the address of the lobbyists who swarm all over Capitol Hill. There are 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. They spend $200 million per month wining, dining and seducing federal officials. Per month!

Of course they’re just doing their job. It’s impossible to commit bribery, legal or otherwise, unless someone’s on the take, and with campaign costs soaring, our politicians always have their hands out. One representative confessed that members of Congress are the only people in the world expected to take large amounts of money from strangers and then act as if it has no effect on their behavior.

This explains why Democrats are having a hard time exploiting the culture of corruption embodied in the scandalous behavior of DeLay and Abramoff. Democrats are themselves up to their necks in the sludge. Just the other day one of the most powerful Democrats in the House bragged to reporters about tapping “uncharted donor fields in the financial industry”—reminding them, not so subtlely, of the possibility that after November the majority leader just might be a Democrat.

When it comes to selling influence, both parties have defined deviancy up, and Tony Soprano himself couldn’t get away with some of the things that pass for business as usual in Washington. We have now learned that Jack Abramoff had almost 500 contacts with the Bush White House over the three years before his fall, and that Karl Rove and other presidential staff were treated to his favors and often intervened on his behalf. So brazen a pirate would have been forced to walk the plank long ago if Washington had not thrown its moral compass overboard.

Alas, despite all these disclosures, nothing is happening to clean up the place. Just as the Republicans in charge of the House kept secret those dirty emails sent to young pages by Rep. Mark Foley — a cover-up aimed at getting them past the election and holding his seat for the party — they are now trying to sweep the DeLay-Abramoff-Reed-and-Norquist scandals under the rug until after Nov. 7, hoping the public at large doesn’t notice that the House is being run by Tom DeLay’s team, minus DeLay. All the talk about reform is placebo.

The only way to counter the power of organized money is with organized and outraged people. Believe me, what members of Congress fear most is a grassroots movement that demands clean elections and an end to the buying and selling of influence—or else! If we leave it to the powers that be to clean up the mess that greed and chicanery have given us, we will wake up one day with a real Frankenstein of a system—a monster worse than the one created by Abramoff, DeLay and their cronies.

By then it will be too late to save Lincoln’s hope for “government of, by, and for the people.”

www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/03/lincoln_weeps.php

September 25, 2006

IDENTIFY THE ENEMIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN THE 21st CENTURY AND ANNIHILATE THEM

WITH TOM HENEGHAN, Cloak and Dagger

Frist Fingered As Extortionist

William Frist (R. Tenn.) has been subpoenaed by the SEC and now faces three counts of criminal indictment for fraud and insider trading.

Noted Republican from Tennessee William Frist was subpoenaed two weeks ago by the SEC (reference documents linked to the HCA Inc. which involve a loan of 1.4 million dollars and the sale of his HCA Inc. stock aka a tip from his brother who is a director of HCA Inc.)

Further Frist whose interest on the loan amounts to about ten thousand dollars a month, has been fingered in receiving direct help in paying back the loan from noted Mega Mossad lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The bribes and under the table money given to Frist is also tied to noted defense contracting company MZM Inc. with direct links to the NSA, Mitchell Wade, and Katherine Harris.

Note: The NSA has used MZM Inc., a byproduct of Choicepoint Software, to collect a secret spy data base on every living and breathing American living in the United States.

(Reference: Choicepoint Software was used to destroy forty thousand votes for Albert Gore Jr. in the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.)

Frist, also received Walt Disney/Mickey Mouse/ABC stock and other financial favors. Frist is now directly linked to Michael Eisner and Coca Cola in the conspiracy to overthrow the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.

Part of this group included noted ABC Talk Show Host George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos was happy to work with Frist and other co-conspirators since he loathed the then U.S. Vice-President Albert Gore Jr. and what Gore represents, namely fairness and respect for the “Rule of Law,” and real family values.

In Sunday’s interview with Frist, Stephanopoulos did not raise any of these questions!

It gets worse. He is now linked to the Tennessee Project with Bay Point School Florida, as well as British Cabinet Member Douglas Alexander and noted Bush Advisor Karen Hughes, in the theft of up to seventy-five thousand votes from the State of Tennessee in the Year 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.

Frist was aware of the Hughes-Alexander-Tennessee Project that allowed an encrypted software in Nashville, Tennessee to switch the Vote Totals from Tennessee in favor of Bush utilizing and compromising the Noted Voters News Service that was still used in the Year 2000….

Note: Frist, a defender of NSA Espionage against the American People, has even threatened to filibuster any attempt to reign in the Gestapo-like activity.

It can now be reported that it was the NSA that had the Program and gave out the encrypted signal that allowed the Election to be stolen in Tennessee.

PS – The NSA has a seven second advance lead time on all financial transactions in the United States. It can now be reported that Frist benefited from this with his Insider Trading Swindles.

PPS – Frist is also linked to noted male prostitute Jeff Gannon in the procurement of whores, male and female, through the noted poker parties run by Abramoff.

Frist, like former Governor McGreevey of New Jersey is married but secretly extortion-friendly and in the closet.

Frist is also linked to sexual liaisons with Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman.

PPPS – Former President Bill Clinton told his wife Hillary Clinton that she is unelectable and is a Dukakis in a dress. This has caused Hillary to experience a massive nervous breakdown in which she is once again being heavily medicated….

www.the-catbird-seat.net/Cloak-Dagger-Frist-Millman.htm

October 11, 2006

BAE Systems wins $87M
contract at Pearl Harbor

By Stewart Yerton, Star-Bulletin

Ensuring the retention of more than 300 jobs at Pearl Harbor for most of the next decade, BAE Systems Inc.’s ship repair division has won a seven-year, $87 million contract from the U.S. Navy to repair ships at BAE’s Hawaii Shipyard, the company said yesterday.

The contract covers maintenance of the 12 Navy ships stationed in Hawaii, as well as transient Navy ships that could stop in Hawaii for repairs while at sea, said John Kowalczyk, a spokesman for BAE Systems in Rockville, Md. It means continued employment for 170 BAE employees in Honolulu and for 150 to 170 contractors, Kowalczyk said .

Although BAE pegged the contract’s value at $87 million, it actually could be worth as much as $270 million at the end of seven years, Kowalczyk said.

BAE Systems Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based BAE Systems PLC.

The benefits of the contract go beyond the jobs it creates for BAE and its contractors, said Tom Smythe, military affairs coordinator for the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. Having the ships docked in Hawaii for repairs also means the crews will be stationed here during that time, which Smythe said is also a benefit for the local economy…

For more, GO TO > > > BAE…Buzzards Absent Ethics

From Washington on $10 Million a Day – How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation, by Ken Silverstein:

PIMPS TO POWER

Lobbyists and the Destruction of Democracy

The link between campaign donations and political policy was brought into sharp focus by the campaign finance scandals that erupted during the 1996 campaign. Even jade observers were started by the Clinton administration’s selling of the Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder, and its organizing of White House coffee klatsches to reward donors and encourage them to make additional contributions.

But political contributions are only one way that big business wins favors in Washington….

Understanding how the capital works, and how business prospers here, requires a trip through the world of beltway lobbying and a review of the vast army of hired guns working at the behest of Corporate America.

Dollar for dollar, lobbying is a better investment than campaign contributions— one reason business spends far more on the former than on the latter.

In 1996, Philip Morris coughed up $19.6 million for lobbying programs vs. $4.2 million for campaign donations (making it the leader in both categories). The same pattern holds true with other firms.

For 1996, Georgia Pacific spent $8.9 million for lobbying and handed out $527,000 in political money. Corresponding figures for AT&T are $8.4 million vs. $1.8 million; for Phizer, $8.3 million vs. $775,000; for Boeing, $5.2 million vs. $770,000; for ARCO, $4.3 million vs. $1.4 million; for Lockheed, $3.5 million vs. $1.26 million; for FedEx, $3.1 million vs. $1.9 million; for Dow Chemical $1.5 million vs. $578,000.

In addition to in-house efforts, most big corporations spend lavishly for outside lobbying firms. Lockheed, for example, retains at least two dozen beltway lobby shops to supplement its own efforts, while FedEx has an additional 10 firms on retainer.

In 1996, Boeing hired seven outside lobby shops for the sole purpose of pushing renewed Most Favored Nation trade status for China, paying them a combined total of at least $160,000 for their efforts.

While corporate lobbying has long been a major force in American politics, it has been greatly transformed during the past few decades. Today, many efforts involve stealth lobbying— the chief tactic here is mobilizing fake “grassroots” campaigns— or with indirect methods, such as buying research from friendly “think tanks” in order to influence Congress and public opinion.

All of this makes calculating corporate lobbying expenditures nearly impossible, though it’s safe to say that lobbying has now become a multi-billion dollar-per-year industry….

When you consider the enormous benefits bestowed on Corporate America by the White House and Congress, the big sums companies spend to win favors are revealed as chump change. Lockheed’s combined expenditures on lobbying and campaign contributions were about $5 million in 1996. That same year, Lockheed’s lobbyists, with help from other arms makers, won approval for the creation of a new $15 billion government fund that will underwrite foreign weapon sales.

In 1996, Microsoft spent less than $2 million for its combined lobbying and campaign contribution expenditures (the former accounted for more than two-thirds of that amount). The following year, Congress awarded the company tax credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the sale of licenses to manufacture its software programs overseas….

It is indisputable … that corporate citizens who retain lobbyists have an enormous advantage in Washington over the regular ones who merely vote.

Tommy Boggs, perhaps Washington’s best known influence peddler, charges $550 per hour for his services. That’s a drop in the bucket to Philip Morris, but Boggs’ rate would eat up the average salary earner’s entire annual income after a mere 43 hours of lobbying activity.

That lobbying has corrupted the political system is no secret. During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to “break the stranglehold the special interests have on our elections and the lobbyists have on our government.”

Such promises (like many others the president made) were forgotten as soon as the election votes were counted.

Clinton picked Vernon Jordan, a top lobbyist and one of Washington’s consummate political insiders, to head his presidential transition team. Among those selected for top administration jobs were Ron Brown, a former colleague of Tommy Boggs at the firm of Patton Boggs; Mickey Kantor of the powerhouse firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; and Howard Paster, a former lobbyist for oil companies, banks and weapons makers….

Republicans criticize Clinton for his coziness with special interests, but they maintain the same intimate relationships with corporate lobbyists.

After winning control of Congress in 1994, the GOP house leadership met weekly with “The Thursday Group,” a pack of lobbyists and activists who helped plot legislative and media strategy on the “Contract With America”.

Included in this elite troupe were hired guns representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and Americans for Tax Reform. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > Drowning in Think Tanks

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From The Money Men, by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum:

THE MONEY MEN

If you assume that campaign money is so distasteful that you don’t want to hear any more about it, you’re closing your mind to one of the most fundamental and most fascinating stories in American politics. It’s okay to be outraged— more than okay. But it’s wrong to be so disgusted that you don’t want to read another word.

Take, for example, the real-life picture we should have of our elected officials. It’s wrong to think of them sitting studiously through boring congressional hearings or making speeches to Rotary Club luncheons.

Think of them, instead, in windowless offices grubbing for money almost every spare moment they get. Fund-raising is so essential to their reelections yet takes so much time that politicians have invented a virtual science of efficient solicitation.

Here’s the typical scene: The lawmaker or would-be lawmaker sits at a desk surrounded by telephones. Aides seated nearby (there are usually 2 or 3 aides, but I’ve heard about instances involving as many as 8) dial up contributors and stay on the line until the would-be fund giver comes on. Then they put that person on hold until the lawmaker gets to their line.

The politician is thus able to move seamlessly from one begging session to another, and groveling can go on nonstop.

So there’s a picture for the ages: democracy on hold, literally.

Here’s another one: Around a conference table in the suite of the Speaker of the House … a dozen lobbyists and trade-association executives plot strategy with the highest-ranking lawmakers in Congress. This isn’t an occasional meeting. It happens every week. On Thursday. At 11 AM. It even has a title: The Thursday Group….

The point is that money men are players. They aren’t dark figures lurking in the background, plotting political intrigue. They are central to the drama. They make a difference in the way laws are made and implemented. Without them, the politicians wouldn’t be politicians. And they insist on, and invariably get, politicians’ attention.

That’s the way it works….

Money, money everywhere.

But not all of it carries the same weight. And not all of it goes to candidates. The laws and rules that govern political fund-raising are many and peculiar. They also are largely ignored. . . .

At the federal level, the most that any person can donate to a candidate is $1,000 per election. Political-action committees (PACs), which are amalgams of individuals, can give $5,000. But that’s just the start. Individuals, labor unions, and corporations can give as much as they want to political parties.

That’s the so-called soft money or, more appropriately, sewer money.

This money, in effect, is used to make a mockery of the limits on direct giving to candidates.

Think of it as legal cheating….

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March 31, 2003

HALF OF CLINTON’S 100 TOP AIDES ARE NOW LOBBYING, REPORT SAYS

By Jonathan Salant, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Many top officials of the Clinton administration remain in Washington, trying to influence actions of their successors in government.

A study being released today by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, ranked the top 100 officials serving when Bill Clinton left office two years ago and found 51 now lobby the government or work for companies that do. The center said the number is about the same as in previous administrations.

“This shows systematically what happen to an administration when they’re tossed out on the street,” said Charles Lewis, the center’s director. “Where do they go? They basically go to the bank.”

Clinton administration officials working for lobbying firms include three Cabinet secretaries – Bruce Babbitt of Interior, Dan Glickman of Agriculture and Rodney Slater of Transportation. Two others, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William Cohen, have formed international business consulting groups. Others work for companies regulated by the government or serve on their boards.

Herbert Alexander, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Southern California, said the Clinton administration officials are following a well-worn path. “Public officials find it much more lucrative to continue their careers after government service through representation of special interests,” Alexander said….

Clinton administration veterans also went into academia. Glickman spends most of his time running the politics institute at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who failed in an effort to become governor of New York as his father, Mario, was, is a senior fellow at the school.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is president of Harvard, and ex-Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala is president of the University of Miami.

The majority, however, traveled the well-worn path from government worker to government lobbyist.

Steve Ricchetti, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, opened a lobbying firm and landed such clients as AT&T, General Motors Corp. and Eli Lilly and Co. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy deLeon became the chief lobbyist for Boeing Co., a major defense contractor.

Most government officials must wait one year before lobbying their former agencies. Likewise, member of Congress can’t lobby their former colleagues for a year.

Shortly after taking office, Clinton issued an executive order that required officials in his administration to wait five years after leaving office before lobbing government agencies. He revoked the order in late December 2000, weeks before leaving office.

“It just means the revolving door is alive and well in Washington,” Lewis said.

“It doesn’t matter what party you’re in, the color of money is green. When you’re one of the top officials in an administration, you’re valuable because of your connections and your perceived clout and your perceived access.”

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April 2, 2002

Capitol Games

by David Corn, The Nation ( http://www.thenation.com )

Taiwangate?–Bush Appointees Linked
to Secret Slush Funds

Allegations that a past president of Taiwan illegally set up a $100 million secret slush fund to pay for overseas intelligence, propaganda, and influence operations are causing ripples that have reached into the Bush Administration.

At the end of March, Next, a Hong Kong magazine, and the China Times, a daily newspaper in Taiwan, reported that classified documents indicated Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s president in the late 1990s, established a secret account in the National Security Bureau to underwrite various activities, including running spy networks in China and elsewhere. The articles, which noted the NSB had made payments to Japanese officials (including former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto) and which identified Taiwanese intelligence officials stationed abroad, detonated a scandal in Taiwan.

The government did not deny the veracity of the reports, and the Taiwanese news media reported Taiwan’s security services were recalling personnel from outposts around the world, including those in the United State, Japan, France and China.

The Next magazine reporter who broke the story, Hsieh Zhong-liang, was charged with breaching national security and banned from leaving the country; his magazine’s office was raided by the police. Hsieh wouldn’t reveal the source who provided the documents, but other journalists speculated the information had come from a former National Security Bureau (NSB) finance officer who is on the run and alleged to have embezzled $5.5 million.

The leaks damaged the current government, which is controlled by the Democratic Progressive Party, for the DPP is allied with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party led by ex-President Lee. Amid all the fuss, Lee called off a trip to the United States.

The scandal has tainted two senior Bush officials in the State Department. Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that Lee used the secret account–which had not been approved by Parliament–to pay Cassidy and Associates, one of Washington’s largest lobbying firms, to work for Taiwan, and the newspaper said the slush fund had covered the costs of trips made to Taiwan by Carl Ford Jr., a Cassidy and Associates consultant.

Ford is now assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.

Sing Tao, citing the classified documents, also reported James Kelly, whom Bush last May appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, received money from this fund when he headed the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank that is an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is based in Washington, DC.

Sing Tao maintained Lee drew $100,000 from the clandestine account in February 1999 to pay the Pacific Forum to support a former Japanese defense official’s study at Harvard University.

Both Ford and Kelly are significant players in crafting Bush Administration policy on Taiwan. Ford is a longtime expert on Chinese affairs. He was a China analyst with the CIA in the 1970s and the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in 1985. He has been a Capitol Hill staffer, a Pentagon official, and a longtime advocate of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. Kelly was director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration. He also served in the Pentagon in the early 1980s.

In the late 1999 and 2000, Ford was indeed a consultant to Cassidy and Associates, according to Justice Department records and a spokesman for the firm. During this time, Cassidy and Associates was mounting a vigorous campaign on Taiwan’s behalf, lobbying Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House and producing pro-Taiwan media materials, including a website, position papers, and a newsletter. (This was a joint effort with its sister company, Powell Tate.) Ford wrote op-eds, letters-to the editor and testified before Congress in support of Taiwan’s positions, usually identified as a consultant to the Taiwan Research Institute, a think tank based in that country.

A spokesman for Cassidy and Associates says the firm was paid by the Taiwan Research Institute. Justice Department records show that Cassidy and Associates received $3.2 million from 1997 to 2000 for this work. “It was our understanding that the TRI money came from private sources,” says the Cassidy and Associates spokesman. “TRI, to us, was a private, nongovernmental think tank. They engaged us and they paid us.”

But perhaps the money was part of an undercover government effort to influence politics and policy in the United States. Would it make any difference to Cassidy and Associates if the money had come from a slush fund, funneled through a research institute?

“That’s a metaphysical question,” the spokesman replies. “I’m not sure it makes any sense for me to respond.”

Did Ford take trips to and from Taiwan as part of his work on Cassidy and Associate’s Taiwan account?

“We really don’t get into that sort of information on our contacts with clients,” the Cassidy and Associates spokesman says. (If you’re wondering why the Cassidy and Associates spokesman is not named here, it’s because the person said he would talk only if I agreed not to use his name.)

Jay Farrar, a spokesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies says his think tank has examined its financial records and found no transactions between any Taiwanese government entity and the Pacific Forum or the CSIS that correspond to the allegations in the Asian media.

He asserts there was no evidence “in our records” of any payment made by Pacific Forum or CSIS to Harvard University.

CSIS has received general support funding from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office ($250,000 or more in 2001), Farrar says. But he notes this is a governmental office that routinely makes grants overseas. “We don’t see any funds from the NSB,” he adds.

Farrar does note CSIS and Pacific Forum employees are free to do outside consulting: “Jim Kelly had that same opportunity when he was at Pacific Forum; he may have taken advantage of that.”

But Farrar says CSIS that has no knowledge whether Kelly did and that CSIS has not had any “formal contact” with Kelly regarding the Taiwan allegations. Has CSIS asked the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office if the money it gave CSIS may have come from Lee’s secret slush fund? No, says Farrar, remarking, “It’s an interesting prospect to go back and ask people who gave you money, is this legal or not?”

Neither Ford nor Kelly will address the media reports from Asia. A woman answering the phone in Ford’s office said he has “no comment” and would not take questions on the subject. Kelly’s office referred me to a spokesman at the State Department who said, “There will be no response from my office. This has nothing to do with the State Department.”

Shouldn’t the State Department have some response?

To recap: news reports in Taiwan and Hong Kong, citing classified documents, say that as part of ex-President Lee’s covert effort to win friends and influence governments around the world, key members of the pro-Taiwan lobby in the United States received money, wittingly or not, from a slush fund. And two alleged to have done so are currently U.S. government officials.

During the campaign finance scandal of the Clinton administration, there was much huffing–mostly among Republicans–about a supposed Chinese campaign to shape politics in the United States. The more rabid right-wingers accused Bill Clinton of selling out the United States to Beijing. But several of the so-called Chinese connections tracked back to Taiwan, not China, and firm evidence of a Chinese plot never fully materialized. (There were hints.)

With the recent media reports out of Taiwan, there is a much stronger case that it was Taiwan, that deployed illegal and covert funds to influence U.S. policy–as well as policy in other nations.

But there has yet been no outrage here. The U.S. media has not caught on to the story, and Ford, Kelly and the State Department have been able to get away with their no-comments-at-all response.

Perhaps the say-nothing strategy will work. But the story might not be over.

Professor Wu Yu-shan of the National Taiwan University tells the BBC that the leaks will “go on and on.” . . .

See also: Pacific Forum

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July 8, 2000

Legislators unmask man
behind US lobbying

MONEY TALKS: The chairman of Makoto Bank has organized a US$2 million lobbying effort in Washington for the
Taiwan Security Enhancement Act

By Stephanie Low, Taipei Times

Opposition legislators were eager yesterday to know the identity and motives of a new Taiwanese client that has recently taken up a US$2 million contract with the US public relations consultants Cassidy and Associates to lobby for passage of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act through the US Congress.

“We don’t understand why a company would spend US$2 million [to lobby the US Congress]. Is this a secret channel of President Chen Shui-bian and is this where our foreign and cross-strait policies will be decided in the future?” KMT Legislator Lin Yi-shih asked during the third general questioning session with Premier Tang Fei yesterday.

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“We don’t understand why a company would spend US$2 million [to lobby the US Congress]. Is this a secret channel of President Chen Shui-bian and is this where our foreign and cross-strait policies will be decided in the future?” – KMT Legislator Lin Yi-shih

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The Washington Post first reported on July 6 that Cassidy and Associates had filed to lobby on behalf of the Taiwan Studies Institute (TSI), formerly known as the Makoto Foundation and chaired by Chen J. Lin.

Lin is currently chairman of the Taiwan-based Makoto Bank and a national policy adviser to Chen. In addition, Lin reportedly was a major financial sponsor of the pro-independence movement in Taiwan.

The TSI signed the contract with Cassidy and Associates just after the Taiwan Research Institute’s (TRI) contract had expired at the end of June, according to the Washington Post. Over the past six years, Cassidy and Associates had maintained a contract totaling about US$10 million with TRI — a think tank headed by Liu Tai-ying, former chairman of the KMT Business Management Committee.

The most well-known achievement of the firm was its securing approval for the high-profile to the US visit of former president Lee Teng-hui in 1995.

Lin said the government should not allow just anyone to hire lobbyists to lobby a foreign country as they wish.

“President Lee still receives praise today for securing his trip. But we don’t have confidence in the DPP. We wonder if the new government can get the same effect. We’re afraid it will endanger our national security,” Lin Yi-shih said.

Premier Tang replied saying that lobbying is completely legal in the US, and the Taiwanese government cannot interfere in an action taken by a person based on his or her “personal political ideal.”

“We have no idea if there is any connection between President Chen and TSI,” Tang said.

At Lin Yi-shih’s request, however, Tang promised he will have relevant authorities complete an investigation in a month on TSI’s lobbying deal to ensure it does not threaten Taiwan’s security.

Chen J. Lin yesterday also showed up to clarify the purpose of the lobbying deal, saying it is not politically motivated at all.

“Especially in America, we need to do the job to make Taiwan’s democratic and economic achievements known,” Chen J. Lin said.

The Makoto Bank chairman explained that the contract with Cassidy and Associates will last for one year, and the US$2 million fee will be paid for by 10 National Taiwan University (NTU) alumni.

On his connection with Chen, he said the president and himself both graduated from NTU’s law school, and they became acquainted when Chen was practicing law in Taipei years ago.

“This matter is as simple as that … there isn’t any political linkage,” Chen J. Lin said.

URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2000/07/08/story/0000042956]

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July 12, 2000

Taiwan’s New Era Looks a Lot Like Old One

By JIM MANN – LOS ANGELES TIMES

WASHINGTON – Taiwan’s new president, Chen Shui-bian, may have been elected as a reformer, but he isn’t bringing a fresh broom to Washington.

In fact, it turns out that Chen is going to do business here the same way his predecessor, Lee Teng-hui, did: by having his friends and financial backers pay large sums of money to a Washington lobbying firm.

In fact, backers of Chen–the first president elected from the Democratic Progressive Party, which long has supported Taiwan’s independence from China–will employ the very same Washington lobbying firm as did the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), which ruled Taiwan for half a century.

Documents filed here last week show that an entity vaguely called the Taiwan Study Institute will pay $2 million over the coming year to Cassidy & Associates, a branch of Shandwick International.

Cassidy, a firm made up largely of former government officials, earns a tidy profit by lunching and chatting up people on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch; its other foreign clients include Saudi Arabia and Gabon.

And what exactly is the “Taiwan Study Institute”? Its leading figure is Lin Chen-yi, a Taiwan banker whom Chen has known since law school, who has served as one of Chen’s and the DPP’s leading donors and who is now one of Chen’s main advisors.

The $2-million lobbying contract “has nothing to do with politics, nor is it related to President Chen or his administration,” Lin insisted in Taiwan last Friday.

That’s odd, because politics is Cassidy’s raison d’etre. Soon after the firm was first retained for $1.5 million a year by Lee Teng-hui’s associates in 1994, it lobbied hard, and ultimately successfully, to win Lee a visa for an unprecedented trip to the United States.

At the time, members of the DPP, then the leading opposition party, attacked the Cassidy contract as an example of how the KMT used its financial clout to twist Taiwan’s foreign policy for its own purposes.

During Chen’s campaign for Taiwan’s presidency, he promised he would change the way the government had operated under the KMT. His overall aim, he told me last January, was “to reduce the influence of money” on Taiwan’s political life.

The interesting question is why Chen seems to have been persuaded that Cassidy’s work was irreplaceable. What, exactly, does the firm do for Taiwan? After all, Taiwan already has its own unofficial embassy in Washington, called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.

Public relations? Lin claimed last week that Cassidy will help inform Americans about Taiwan’s democratization. But Taiwan’s diplomats in the United States have more than enough phones, faxes and copying machines to do that work themselves.

Lobbying for legislation? By one theory, Cassidy plays bad cop to TECRO’s good cop. If Taiwan’s diplomats were to work Capitol Hill or the press too assiduously, the State Department would rebuke them. So Cassidy does the job.

Maybe so, but one also has to wonder if this work is worth $2 million a year.

Lobbyists’ Influence Seen as ‘Overstated’

The main legislation concerning Taiwan on Capitol Hill is called the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, which would strengthen U.S. defense links to Taiwan.

When that bill passed the House a few months ago, the most active organization was not Cassidy but a nonprofit grass-roots group called the Formosan Assn. for Public Affairs, which represents 500,000 Taiwanese Americans–many of them in Los Angeles.

“A lot of the supposed influence of lobbyists on Capitol Hill tends to be overstated,” observed one congressional staff member who has worked on the Taiwan legislation. Cassidy’s most important function may lie elsewhere. Earlier this year, one member of Lee Teng-hui’s government explained the contract to me this way:

“The real purpose is to collect accurate political intelligence about what’s happening in Washington. Lee Teng-hui didn’t trust the reports of TECRO and his own foreign ministry. A t $4.5 million [over three years], it was a bargain.”

Taiwan’s new president has probably decided to perpetuate this deal at the suggestion of Lee. Since the March election, Chen has made courtly public visits to pay homage to his predecessor, and the two men have engaged in some private meetings too.

In fact, after the election, there was speculation that Cassidy would just keep working for Lee and his allies, and they would have passed on whatever they learned to Taiwan’s new president. But that would have looked like too cozy an arrangement between the KMT’s ex-president and the DPP’s leader.

Elected to Change Government Culture

In the end, the renewal of Cassidy’s contract is important for what it tells us about Taiwan’s new president.

Chen Shui-bian has been trying to ease tensions with China, and for that endeavor he deserves credit. But he was also elected to change the way the Taiwan government worked.

To be sure, Chen is doing no more than China and Taiwan’s KMT have done before him. But Chen promised to be different. In his inaugural speech last month, Taiwan’s president proclaimed “the beginning of a new era.”

At least in Washington, Taiwan’s new era is beginning to look a lot like the old one….

NOW, PUT ON YOUR DARK SHADES AND TAKE A SHORT WALK TO SEE

THE BIRDS IN THE LOBBY

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Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld – One of the largest nests of Lobbyists in the world.

In 1998, this firm declared total lobbying income of $11,800,000. Among their clients are the likes of Alliance of American Insurers; America Online; American Express; American Financial Group; Apollo Advisers; AT&T; Biotechnology Industry Organization; Boeing Co.; Capital Gaming International; CBS Corp; Citigroup; Korean International Trade Assn; Miller & Chevalier; National Hockey League; Pfizer; PG&E Corp; Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America; Philip Morris; Pohang Iron & Steel; Samsung Electronics; Sri Lanka Apparel Exporters Assn; AOLTime Warner; and Warner-Lambert, just to mention a few.

* * * * *

December 11, 2001

The White House connection: Saudi ‘agents’ close Bush friends

by Maggie Mulvihill, Jonathan Wells and Jack Meyers, Boston Globe

A powerful Washington, D.C., law firm with unusually close ties to the White House has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist front.

The influential law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld has represented three wealthy Saudi businessmen – Khalid bin Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris – who have been scrutinized by U.S. authorities for possible involvement in financing Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.

In addition, Akin, Gump currently represents the largest Islamic charity in the United States, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Richmond, Texas.

Holy Land’s assets were frozen by the Treasury Department last week as government investigators probe its ties to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group blamed for suicide attacks against Israelis.

Partners at Akin, Gump include one of President Bush’s closest Texas friends, James C. Langdon, and George R. Salem, a Bush fund-raiser who chaired his 2000 campaign’s outreach to Arab-Americans.

Another longtime partner is Barnett A. “Sandy” Kress, the former Dallas School Board president who Bush appointed in January to work for the White House as an “unpaid consultant” on education reform. . . .

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) – A really, really BIG nest of lobbyists!

Flashback from the internet, author unknown, updated: February, 1991:

Principals:

In 1989 the members of the board of trustees included: chairman, Willard C. Butcher of Chase Manhattan Bank; vice-chairman, Paul F. Oreffice of Dow Chemical Corp; Robert Anderson, Rockwell International Corp; Griffin B. Bell, King & Spalding; treasurer, Winton M. Blount of Blount, Inc. ; Edwin L. Cox, Cox Oil and Gas; Christopher C. DeMuth; Charles T. Fisher III, National Bank of Detroit; Tully M. Friedman, Hellman & Friedman; Christopher B. Galvin, Motorola, Inc. ; Robert F. Greenhill, Morgan Stanley & Co; D. Gale Johnson, AEI Council of Academic Advisers; Richard B. Madden, Potlatch Corp; Robert H. Halott, FMC Corp; Paul W. McCracken, Edmund Ezra Day University; Randall Meyer, Exxon Co; Paul A. Miller, Pacific Enterprises; Richard M. Morrow, Amoco Corp; Paul H. O’Neill, Aluminum Co. of America; David Packard, Hewlett-Packard Co; Edmund T. Pratt, Jr, Pfizer Co; Mark Sheperd, Jr, Texas Instruments Inc; Roger B. Smith, General Motors Corp; Richard D. Wood, Eli Lilly and Co; Walter B. Wriston, former chairman of Citicorp.

Officers in 1989 were: Christopher C. DeMuth, president; David B. Gerson, executive vice president; Patrick Ford, vice president for public affairs.

The council of academic advisers were: D. Gale Johnson, chairman; Gary S. Becker; Donald C. Hellmann; Gertrude Himmelfarb; Nelson W. Polsby; Herbert Stein; Murray L. Weidenbaum; and James Q. Wilson.

Paul McCracken was president in 1986. William Baroody, Jr. was president in 1985. Michael Novak was director of social & political studies in 1985.

Among the scholars and fellows at AEI in 1988 to 1989 were Jeane Kirkpatrick, Alan Keyes, Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, International Trade Commission Chair Anne Brunsdale, White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, Constantine C. Menges, Joshua Muravchik, Michael Novak, Richard N. Perle, Herbert Stein, Ben J. Wattenberg, and Irving Kristol.

Other government notables from the Nixon, Ford, and Bush administrations that worked at AEI include: William E. Simon, Carla and Roderick Hills, L. William Seidman, and former President Gerald Ford.

Background:

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a 501(c)((3) tax-exempt organization founded in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown, then chairman of the board of Johns-Manville Corp. Its original purpose was to be a spokesperson for big business and to promote through publications and seminars the ideas and theories of free enterprise, including maintenance of a free economic order, resolute national defense, and “tradition-proven” cultural & political values. While not as far to the right as some of the more recently established think tanks, AEI is staunchly anti-communist and pro-military. It has housed a number of “cold warriors” among its ranks, and through conferences, the media, and publications has supported “freedom fighters” such as Jonas Savimbi.

In the 1960s the organization, determined to gain more corporate funding and expand its influence, applied for tax-exempt status, which it received in the mid-1960s after a two-year examination by the IRS. At the same time it became more overtly political in its goals. In its new guise, a main focus of AEI is to influence national policy and to place its scholars into influential positions in government.

In the mid-1970s AEI joined with other conservative think tanks–backed by greatly-expanded corporate funding–in a concerted effort to influence public policy in ways favorable to private enterprise. These groups churned out “books, books, and more books” attacking liberal “myths” and proposing specific conservative policy suggestions. Through effective public relations and sophisticated media campaigns, AEI has attacked “uncontrolled government spending, excessive regulation, and the evils of bureaucracy. “

Under the leadership of the late William Baroody, Sr. , AEI, paralleling the growth of the conservative Republican movement in the U. S. , grew in the mid-1970s from a group of twelve resident “thinkers” to a sophisticated, well-funded organization with 145 resident scholars, 80 adjunct scholars, and a large supporting staff.

In 1984 author John Saloma wrote that “[AEI] has developed perhaps the most effective public-relations campaign for disseminating political ideas that has ever been mounted. ” Major factors contributing to AEI’s phenomenal growth were the establishment of political action committees and a shift in focus by conservative foundations to influencing the direction of politics.

William Baroody, Sr. was succeeded in the AEI presidency by his son William Baroody, Jr. In 1986 William Baroody, Jr. resigned and was replaced by Paul W. McCracken, who had been the chairman of AEI’s Council of Academic Advisers for more than two decades. (23) Current president Christopher DeMuth took over from McCracken in late 1987.

AEI began publishing its own periodicals in 1977. Among its periodicals are Public Opinion, an anti-regulation journal called Regulation, AEI, Foreign Policy and Defense Review, and The AEI Economist. Every year AEI publishes numerous books and reports generated by its scholars and fellows. AEI makes these publications available to AEI-sponsored Public Policy Research Centers in more than 200 U. S. colleges and universities.

Not only has AEI been influential in its own right, but it has fostered other think tanks and independent publications. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a rightwing think tank once connected to Georgetown University, is a spinoff from AEI as is the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

This World, a publication of the Institute for Educational Affairs (a group started by William E. Simon and Irving Kristol of AEI) is another spinoff that aims to combine AEI’s conservative positions with moral and religious ones.

At the time Ronald Reagan came into the presidential office in 1980, AEI had five centers of study: Center for the Study of Government Regulation; Economic Policy; Political and Social Processes; Legal Policy; and Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy.

It was well prepared to support the administration’s conservative economic policies. Currently AEI research focuses on three broad areas: economic policy (domestic and international) led by Marvin Kosters; foreign and defense policy led by Jeane Kirkpatrick; and social and political studies led by conservative columnist and religious activist Michael Novak.

AEI headquarters are on Pennsylvania Avenue half way between the White House and the “Hill. “

Funding:

AEI’s budget in 1975 was $4 million; in 1985 it was $12 million with 51 percent coming from corporate donations. AEI’s income in 1987 was $9 million and in 1988 was $10 million.

AEI has received major contributions from a battery of very conservative foundations, including the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, and the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust.

In 1985 Olin, headed by former AEI associate William E. Simon, gave AEI a total of $197,499. In the same year AT&T gave AEI $40,000; Metropolitan Life $30,000; Morgan Guaranty Trust Co Of New York Charitable Trust gave $35,000; Smith-Richardson Foundation $64,000; Proctor and Gamble Fund $125,000; TRW Foundation gave $15,000; U. S. Steel Foundation donated $40,000; and Shell Companies Foundation gave $85,000. (11)

Major foundation support for AEI in 1985 came from: the General Electric Foundation–$40,000; Amoco Foundation-$285,000; Ford Motor Company Foundation–$100,000; American Express Foundation–$25,000; AT&T Foundation $40,000; Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust–$75,000; the Henry Luce Foundation-$75,000 John M. Olin Foundation–$297,000; Texaco–$50,000; Smith-Richardson Foundation–$290,000; The Procter & Gamble Fund $125,000; the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust–$875,000; and the Shell Companies Foundation–$85,000. Other smaller funders included BankAmerica Foundation, Gates Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, and PPG Industries. (35)

Major funders in 1986 included: the General Electric Foundation–$80,000; Amoco–$450,000; Kraft Foundation-$147,000; Ford Motor Company Fund–$100,000; General Motors Foundation– $200,000; Charles E. Culpepper Foundation–$50,000; Eastman Kodak Foundation–$50,000; the J. M. Foundation–$50,000; the Henry Luce Foundation–$66,000; Metropolitan Life Foundation–$115,000; the Proctor & Gamble Fund–$135,000; the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust–$800,000; Rockwell International Corporate Trust–$160,000; and Shell Companies Foundation-$85,000. Among the smaller funders were: Gates Foundation, Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, gave $1 million grant for a two year foreign policy study in March, 1987.

AEI, unlike some think tanks, has no endowment-something which has led the organization into financial embarrassment in 1985 when its operating budget outstripped its donations by 25 percent.

AEI has received financial assistance from the U. S. International Development Cooperation Agency of the Agency for International Development (AID). In 1982 it received $33,000 to support a conference on constitutionalism and democracy; in 1983 it received $59,140 for a similar conference; in 1984 support for the conference rose to $74,269; and in 1985 AEI received $74,269 for the conference and a similar amount for public policy research. (19,20,21,22)

Activities:

AEI’s main business is to promote the advancement of free enterprise capitalism and to place its people in influential governmental positions. Its activities center around self-promotion and promotion of the ideas it wants to see implemented. AEI sends a steady flow of editorials to more than 100 newspapers across the country. AEI held televised Public Policy Forums, aired on more than 600 television and radio stations in 1982, in which it advocated conservative positions on a wide variety of subjects. Its fellows and scholars regularly appear on national television as “experts”.

Each summer AEI holds a World Forum for chief executives of corporations where attendees are expected to make financial contributions to the think tank. The forum is hosted by former president Gerald Ford at Aspen, Colorado. (8)

Annually AEI gives the Francis Boyer Award, sponsored by the Smith-Kline Beckman Corporation. Past award winners include: Gerald Ford, Arthur Burns, Henry Kissinger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Bork, and in 1988, then-President Ronald Reagan.

In 1980 AEI used grants from Reader’s Digest Foundation and the DeWitt Wallace Fund to establish the DeWitt Wallace Chair in Communications in a Free Society.

In 1983 AEI sponsored a forum on “War Powers and the Constitution,” prompted by two questionable military actions authorized by President Reagan – the invasion of Grenada and the dispatch of Marines to Lebanon.

Among the panel members was then-Representative Richard Cheney, the current Secretary of Defense and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Both men were opposed to the War Powers Resolution with Cheney stating that the resolution “is an unwise and virtually unworkable intrusion by the legislative branch into the powers and prerogatives the president needs to lead the United States in a very dangerous and hostile world.”

AEI along with other conservative groups such as the Council for Inter-American Security and Citizens for America, has been credited with a leading role in developing and implementing the Reagan administration’s Nicaraguan contra policies.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, Undersecretary of Defense for Public Policy Fred Ikle, Vice President George Bush, and Roger Fontaine – major players in contra policy – are all former AEI scholars and associates.

AEI, with corporate directors from American Cynamid, Dow Chemical, and Chase Manhatten Bank – all corporations with profitable operations in South Africa – supported the pro-apartheid government of South Africa.

In 1988 AEI published 42 books and over 400 articles and research papers on a wide variety of policy issues. AEI scholars and their work appeared far more frequently on national media than those of other research institutes. AEI held seminars and conferences weekly on key issues confronting our society such as employment and income, agriculture, international trade and finance, regulation, foreign and defense policy, exporting democracy and resisting communism. AEI reports that its meetings were well attended by policymakers and congressional staffers.

AEI opposed the INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces) treaty that was signed by the U. S. in 1988. A special AEI working group supported the criticisms of former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, an AEI resident fellow.

Government Connections:

AEI is extremely well-connected on the political scene. Among those in the top echelons of government who worked with AEI in 1988 were: then-Vice President George Bush who spoke at AEI’s Annual Policy Conference; Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir who spoke at an AEI conference; and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Bork, and Norman Ornstein who wrote books for AEI.

William Baroody Sr. took a leave of absence from AEI in the early 1960s to organize Goldwater’s presidential campaign. AEI took the lead in making “Goldwater conservatism” respectable.

Christopher DeMuth was known as the “deregulation czar” in his position as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the first term of the Reagan administration. DeMuth also worked as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to that DeMuth served as a staff assistant to President Richard M. Nixon.

James Miller III went from AEI to the Reagan administration as Federal Trade Commission chairman and than administrator of the Office of Management and Budget.

William Simon was Secretary of the Treasury during the Nixon administration.

Michael Novak campaigned for the creation of a White House Office of Ethnic Affairs; he served as its adviser during the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. He was appointed by President Reagan to act as chief of the U. S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

David Packard was Under Secretary of Defense under Melvin R. Laird during the Nixon administration.

Carla Hills is the U. S. Trade Representative under President Bush. She was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1975 to 1977 during the Ford administration. She also served as Assistant U. S. Attorney in Los Angeles from 1958 to 1961 and Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Justice Department in 1974 until she took over at HUD.

Roderick Hills, husband of Carla, served as counsel to President Gerald Ford in 1975. He was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1975 to 1977. Hills is chairman of the U. S. ASEAN Technical Center.

Constantine Menges was a CIA and National Security Council (NSC) official under the Reagan administration. While serving with the NSC, Menges, along with Lt. Col. Oliver North, attended the meetings of the Tuesday Group of the right-wing, anti-communist, non-governmental organization, the American Security Council. Menges, according to authors Sara Diamond and Richard Hatch, claims to be the intellectual author of the Grenada invasion plan.

Alan Keyes was an aide to Jeane Kirkpatrick at the United Nations. He served as former President Reagan’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs during which time he reportedly worked on covert funding for the Nicaraguan contras. Keyes was the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration.

Paul McCracken was chairman of the President Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1969 to 1971. He served on the Council from 1956 to 1959 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Private Connections:

AEI worked closely with the Business Roundtable, a militant, lobbying organization formed in 1974. Members of the Business Roundtable were the chief executive officers (CEOs) from 190 major corporations, including General Motors, General Electric, IBM, AT&T, and Dupont. The business of the Business Roundtable is or was business and the CEOs involved lobbied directly with the administration and members of Congress. According to journalist Sidney Blumenthal, making contributions to AEI was a pitch made at almost every policy committee meeting of the Roundtable.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a prominent member of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) and the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). CDM is an anticommunist group that was formed by the conservative wing of the Democratic Party in 1972 to promote a strong military. Many of its members went on to join the hawkish CPD. Kirkpatrick was also connected with PRODEMCA (Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America). PRODEMCA used funds from Oliver North’s illegal contra support network for media campaigns in favor of aid to the Nicaraguan contras. Kirkpatrick has been on the “faculty” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a rightwing think tank sometimes called “a parking lot for former government big shots. ” She also served on the board of Lewis Lehrman’s conservative citizens lobbying group Citizens for America and on the stridently anticommunist Committee for the Free World. She was the vice president of the short-lived Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, a group funded by the Unification church owned Washington Times which was supposed to funnel aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

William Simon was chairman of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. He is or was on the board of AmeriCares and is a longtime member of the Knights of Malta, both of which were a part of the Nicaraguan contra supply network. Simon served on the national council of PRODEMCA (Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America). He is or was an international business counselor at CSIS where “The William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy” is awarded annually to scholars of the free enterprise system. Simon is or was a trustee at the Heritage Foundation and has been connected with Accuracy in Media, the media watchdog group for the Right. Simon is or was on the secretive Council for National Policy, a group that considered itself the policy development body for the right.

Michael Novak has affiliations with the CPD and was a cofounder with Penn Kemble of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. He has been a Hudson Institute fellow and on the advisory committee of the neo-conservative journal The National Interest. Novak is on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a neo-conservative religious activist group working to undermine progressive movements within the religious community. Fellow conservatives from AEI Richard John Neuhaus and Peter Berger are also on the IRD board. Novak was on the board of directors of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund.

Irving Kristol was a co-founder of CDM. He is the publisher of the National Interest magazine and co-editor of the Public Interest magazine. Kristol was managing editor of Commentary and former executive vice president of Basic Books. He is a frequent columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Kristol is credited with being the one who convinced big business that it would be to its benefit to fund conservative think tanks.

Ben Wattenberg was a co-founder and is chairman of CDM. He is a major producer of publications in support of neoconservative policies. He is portrayed on public affairs shows as a “Democrat,” theoretically providing a liberal viewpoint. Wattenberg, a staunch neo-conservative, was an outspoken supporter of the policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

David Packard gave a substantial start-up grant to the pro-military Committee on the Present Danger. He has also been a leading fundraiser for AEI, the Hoover Institution on War and Peace and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Carla Hills is on the board of directors of IBM, Corning Glass Works, American Airlines, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Henley Group, and Chevron Corporation. She was a member of the Trilateral Association from 1977 to 1982. (44)

Constantine Menges received a $33,000 grant from the United States Institute of Peace, a quasi-private, government-funded think tank that purports to work for peaceful solutions to world conflicts.

Alan Keyes is a member of the South Africa Lobby in the United States, a group supporting the pro-apartheid administration in South Africa. He left government service to join the public relations firm of Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly to assist in preparing for Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi’s tour of Washington DC. Keyes served on the World Freedom Foundation’s Bi-Partisan Commission on Free and Fair Elections in Nicaragua. The World Freedom Foundation (WFF) is a stridently anticommunist group and its representatives were denied visas to enter Nicaragua to observe the 1990 elections because of their strong pro-contra bias. Keyes is or was chairman of the rightwing citizens’ lobbying group Citizens for America, a group which worked to support the Reagan agenda. Keyes is or was head of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, a group promoting implementation of the recommendations of the Grace Commission. He has frequently been sought as a speaker by rightwing groups to defend the South African apartheid government.

AEI received an $18,000 grant from the U. S. Institute of Peace for an analysis of arms control in Western diplomacy.

Misc:

President Ronald Reagan said of AEI in 1988: “The American Enterprise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part. AEI’s remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks–and none has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute.”

For more on William E. Simon, GO TO > > > William Simon Says…

Brent Scowcroft – Chairman of The Pacific Forum.

January, 1997

New York Mob at Mena

By Ace R. Hayes, Portland Free Press

Yet another CIA-Mafia drug connection: Richard Brenneke puts mob boss John Gotti and CIA boss Donald Gregg in the middle of contra drug operations at Mena Airport.

In Dec 1996, the Portland Free Press secured a copy of Richard Brenneke’s 21 June 1991 sworn-deposition before Congressman William Alexander, Jr, and Chad Farris, chief deputy attorney general of Arkansas. . . .

We secured former congressman William Alexander’s fax number and sent him a request for confirmation. We got more than we hope for – Jan 1997: “… the Brenneke transcript, along with other evidence of money laundering by Barry Seal at Mena, Arkansas, was delivered to Judge Walsh for action. Nothing followed. I agree that the American people deserve to know the truth about our government. Thank you for providing it. Good luck.” (signed Bill Alexander)

~ ~ ~

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, since World War II, or World War I, or the Spanish American War– take your choice– have witnessed the tip of many criminal icebergs. The official investigations of the criminal icebergs almost always stopped at the waterline. The other 90 percent of the criminal icebergs were never hauled onto the beach for complete examination, prosecution and correction.

The criminal cases of 1980 to the present are in perfect harmony with this honored tradition. This is, of course, why Americans are the most profoundly ignorant people on planet earth. The illusion of knowledge is far worse than knowing you don’t know.

The Iran-Contra-cocaine criminal iceberg was subjected to a series of bogus investigations and damage control “exposes.” The Tower Commission and Select Committee of the House and Senate on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition in 1987, began the damage control operation for the Imperial state.

But the Hall of Shame did not stop with John Tower, Ed Muskie and Brent Scowcroft or Dan Inouye and Lee Hamilton. It included Senator John Kerry and his Special Counsel Jack Blum and Staff Aid Dick McCall. It reached to the Special Counsel, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh …

See also: Kissinger Associates; Pacific Forum

For more, GO TO > > > The Story of Enron

Kissinger Associates – The well-connected lobbying firm headed by Henry Kissinger.

From Washington on $10 Million a Day: How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation, by Ken Silverstein.

KISSINGER: THE NOBEL LAUREATE OF LOBBYING

The China lobby also counts on support from dozens of former government officials –from the commercial, diplomatic and military establishment – who write pro-China op-ed pieces, send letters to members of Congress and personally lobby on the Hill. Many of these officials have money at stake in China, though this rarely is noted when they shill for Beijing.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger now heads Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm which opens doors for U.S. companies seeking business in China (and other Third World nations). In 1997, Disney hired Kissinger to smooth ruffled feathers with China over the company’s production of Kundun, a film that spoke favorably of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Chinese-occupied Tibet. Chinese anger over the movie threatened Disney’s plans to open a theme park outside of Beijing.

Following the massacre at Tiananmen, Kissinger argued that no government in the world should be expected to tolerate protesters’ occupation of a public square for a lengthy period of time.

Former U.S. ambassador to China Leonard Woodcock advises Bell Helicopter and Chrysler on their China operations. In 1996, David Rothkopf left the Commerce Department, where he promoted trade with China, to take up residence as managing director of Kissinger Associates, where he performs the same function. Lionel Olmer, a Commerce undersecretary for international trade under Ronald Reagan and now counsel to the board of U.S.-China Business Council, advises American firms that export to China while simultaneously lobbying against restrictions on high-tech exports to Beijing.

Two especially active friends of China are Al Haig and Brent Scowcroft. The former, a secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, has helped United Technologies work the China market and also serves as “honorary senior advisor” to a Chinese firm called Cosco, wich is seeking to take over closed Navy facilities in Long Beach, California.

Haig furiously lobbied Congress during Congressional debate on MFN in 1996, though his apparent lack of mental equilibrium – which so frightened the public during his years of public service that Haig was in large measure responsible for producing the Nuclear Freeze movement – did not serve Beijing well.

“Haig aggressively berated anyone who dared oppose his views and scoffed at their intelligence,” says an aide to Rep. Chris Cox of California.

“When my boss suggested that Taiwan be admitted to the WTO ahead of China, he went absolutely ballistic.”

As a member of the National Security Council, Scowcroft in 1989 traveled to Beijing shortly after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square for consultations with Chinese leaders (who commemorated his arrival by pummeling a group of student demonstrators). After leaving government, Scowcroft went to Kissinger Associates and now heads his own consulting firm, The Scowcroft Group, which develops “market entry strategies” for companies seeking overseas opportunities.

In October of 1996, Scowcroft traveled to Beijing, joining Chubb Corporation CEO Dean O’Hare at a meeting with Premier Li Peng. According to an account in the Chinese press, Li “expressed his appreciation for the prolonged efforts Scowcroft has made in helping to develop Sino-U.S. relations, “while Scowcroft assured his host that he was “willing to make further efforts” for that cause.

Scowcroft also sits on the board of at least two corporations with big interests in China, Northrop Grumann and Qualcomm, and is a trustee of the business-funded Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation, a right-wing beltway outfit that promotes closer ties with Beijing.

None of this has stopped Scowcroft from offering himself up as a dispassionate observer of the China scene. He testifies on the Hill about the importance of close ties to Beijing, briefs members of Congress on the MFN issue at the invitation of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks, and speaks at public events where he reiterates those positions….

For more, GO TO > > > Of Vampires and Daisies; The Kissinger of Death

Miller & Chevalier – A Washington, DC-based nest of Lawyers and Lobbyists.

From their web-site, 8/1/00: … In 1920, Robert Miller and Stuart Chevalier founded Miller & Chevalier as the nation’s first law firm specializing in tax matters. Mr. Miller had served as Solicitor and Mr. Chevalier as Asst Solicitor of the Internal Revenue Service shortly after the first federal income tax laws were enacted. . . .

Like our firm’s founders, many of our tax lawyers have worked in federal government service….

Our firm’s tax practice is diverse, responding to the increasing complexity of the international tax system and the need for Washington representation to deal effectively with important tax policy issues. We serve clients in numerous industries: … aerospace, automobile, banking and finance, natural resources and energy, chemicals, electronics, pharmaceutical, retail, and health care insurance….

Our firm represents over half of the Fortune 50 companies. We also work with foreign-owned companies of similar size …

Taxation – Representative Engagements

Amoco Corp v. Commissioner (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals … held that Amoco was entitled to foreign tax credits for Egyptian income taxes paid on its behalf by the Egyptian National Oil Co . . . The amount of the asserted deficiency was over $450 million….

Atlantic Richfield Co v. Commissioner (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . This case involves over 200 issues and a deficiency in excess of $700 million. Some of the issues involve hedging, tax accounting, foreign source income, and capitalization questions….

B.F. Goodrich v. United States (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . This case involved whether interest expenses incurred on corporate owned life insurance were deductible. The taxpayer sought a refund of approximately $2.5 million. The case was settled….

The Boeing Co v. United States (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . This case involves the allocation and apportionment of research and development expenses for purposes of computing combined taxable income for DISC/FSC purposes. The taxpayer is seeking a refund of over $450 million. The District Court granted Boeing’s motion for summary judgment; the govt’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit is pending….

Cheng v. Commissioner and Pen v. Commissioner . . . The issue in these companion cases was whether commissions earned as compensation for the performance of personal services in Taiwan were taxable as income effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business. The total amount at issue exceeded $40 million in deficiencies, penalties, and interest. The government conceded…. (Those must have been some personal services! I wonder what kind?)

Exxon Corp v. Commissioner (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . The Tax Court held that the Commissioner’s proposed allocation of over $6.5 billion in income was precluded under Code sections 61 and 482 due to a foreign legal restriction….

General Electric Co v. Commissioner (a.k.a. US Taxpayers) . . . This case involved whether the taxpayer properly elected … to deduct currently approximately $118 million in research and development expenses.

~ ~ ~

In addition to their legal services, Miller & Chevalier declared lobbying income of $1.4 million in 1998, with total lobbying expenditures of $320,000 (all to the lobbying firm of Akin, Gump).

Among Miller & Chevalier’s lobbying clients: Assn of Financial Service Holding Cos; Atlantic Richfield; Blue Cross/Blue Shield; Boeing Co; Boston Edison; Chevy Chase Bank; Gallo Winery; Monsanto Co; Nuclear Fuel Services; and the Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores.

For more, GO TO > > > Buzzards of Paradise; Pimps of Politics; The Morgan, Lewis & Bockius Report; The Nuclear Nests

Pacific Forum – A tax-exempt, private, “foreign policy research institute” (i.e. “think tank”) based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

From the CSIS website:

Program Overview

Based in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Pacific Forum CSIS is a non-profit, private, foreign policy research institute that operates as the Asia Pacific arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Washington, D.C.

Founded in 1975, the thrust of the Forum’s work is to help stimulate cooperative policies in the Asia Pacific region through debate and analyses undertaken with the region’s leaders in the academic, government, and corporate arenas. The Forum’s programs encompass current and emerging political, security, economic/business, and ocean policy issues. It collaborates with a network of more than 30 research institutes around the Pacific Rim, drawing on Asian perspectives and disseminating its projects’ findings and recommendations to opinion leaders, governments, and publics throughout the region.

An international Board of Governors guides the Pacific Forum’s work; it is chaired by Brent Scowcroft, former Assistant to Presidents Bush and Ford for National Security Affairs. The Forum is funded by grants from foundations, corporations, individuals, and governments, the latter providing but a small percentage of the Forum’s $1.2 million annual budget. The Forum’s studies are objective and nonpartisan and it does not engage in classified or proprietary work.

Board of Governors

Chairman

Brent Scowcroft —— Lt. Gen. USAF (Ret.) President, The Forum for International Policy. Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Washington, D.C.)

President

Ralph Cossa —— Former Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Reagan and Senior Director, Asian Affairs, NSC Staff (Honolulu)

Vice Chairmen

Thomas B. Hayward —— Admiral USN (Ret.) President, Hayward Associates, Inc. Former Chief of Naval Operations and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Seattle)

Pyong Hwoi Koo —— Chairman, Korea International Trade Association; Advisory Board Member, LG Group; Chairman, Korea Committee for World Cup 2002 (Seoul)

L. R. Vasey —— Rear Admiral USN (Ret.) Founder and Senior Advisor for Policy, Pacific Forum CSIS. Former Chief of Strategic Plans and Policies for U.S. Pacific Command and Secretary to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Honolulu)

Governors

R. Richard Ablon —— Chairman and CEO, Ogden Corporation (New York)

Mary Bitterman —— President and CEO, KQED Inc. Former Director, Voice of America (Honolulu and San Francisco)

Frank Boas —— Attorney-at-Law; President, Frank Boas Foundation (Honolulu)

Gareth C.C. Chang —— Executive Chairman, Star TV (Hong Kong)

Nelson An-ping Chang —— President, Chia Hsin Cement Corporation (Taipei)

Ronald J. Hays —— Admiral USN (Ret.) International Business Consultant. Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (Honolulu)

David A. Heenan —— Chairman of Trustees, The Estate of James Campbell (Honolulu)

Hirotaru Higuchi —— Chairman, Asahi Breweries, Ltd. Vice Chairman, Keidanren. Chairman, Economic Strategy Council; former Chairman, Prime Minister’s Advisory Group on Defense Issues (Tokyo)

Karen Elliott House —— President, International Group, Dow Jones & Company Inc. (New York)

Hong-Choo Hyun —— Attorney-at-Law, Kim & Chang. Former Ambassador to the U.S. (Seoul)

Raymond F. Johnson —— Chairman Emeritus, Caltex Petroleum (Dallas)

Amos A. Jordan —— Counselor, Pacific Forum CSIS. Former President, Pacific Forum CSIS and CSIS; former senior State Dept. and DOD official (Bountiful, Utah)

Jin Hyun Kim —— President, The University of Seoul. Former Editor, Korea Economic Daily and former Minister of Science and Technology (Seoul)

L.W. “Bill” Lane, Jr. —— Consultant and Member, Board of Directors, The Time Inc. Magazine Co. Former U.S. Ambassador to Australia (Menlo Park, CA)

Toshiaki Ogasawara —— Chairman and Publisher, The Japan Times, Ltd. (Tokyo)

Yoshio Okawara —— President, International Institute for Policy Studies. Former Ambassador of Japan to the U.S. (Tokyo)

R.T. Peng —— President, Taiwan Transportation Machinery Corp. (Taipei)

Rex C.A. Reyes —— Chairman and CEO, Galaxy Group. (Manila)

Robert A. Scalapino —— Robson Research Professor of Government Emeritus, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California (Berkeley)

H. Howard Stephenson —— Chairman, Executive Committee, Bank of Hawaii (Honolulu)

Barbara Tanabe —— Managing Director, Pacific Century Inc. (Honolulu)

Jusuf Wanandi —— Chairman, Supervisory Board, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta)

Pacific Forum
1001 Bishop Street
Pauahi Tower, Suite 1150
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
ph: 808-521-6745 | fax: 808-599-8690 |

For more on Think Tanks, GO TO > > > Drowning in Think Tanks

Patton Boggs – Another 9-11 profiteer?

January 31, 2002

PATTON BOGGS LOBBIES FOR SAUDIS

Saudi Arabia is stepping up its Capitol Hill lobbying effort via a deal with Patton Boggs arranged by its media relations unit Qorvis Communications.

PB is to receive a $100,000 flat fee, plus expenses, through Feb. 15 from Qorvis for educating Congress and staff on issues that are important to the Saudis.

Ed Newberry outlined PB’s mission in a letter sent to Qorvis CEO Michael Petruzzello, the former Shandwick International CEO and E. Bruce Harrison Co. executive.

The $350 an-hour-attorney is a former press secretary to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), and an expert on energy matters.

He runs the Saudi account with Jack Deschauer, who was Director of Senate Affairs for the Secretary of Defense, and former Legislative Counsel for the U.S. Navy.

Qorvis is affiliated with Patton Boggs.

For more on the Military-Industrial Complex, GO TO > > > Nests in the Pentagon

U.S. Fuel and Security Inc. – A political Visigoth.

From Washington on $10 Million a Day: . . .

Lobbyists and Nuclear Visigoths.

Big money corporate lobbyists don’t always win their battles, but when they are defeated it’s rarely because Congress or the White House rises to defend the public interest. More likely the scheme being advanced was so loopy that even official Washington was too embarrassed to take up the cause.

That’s the case with a multi-billion dollar plot put together by a cabal of beltway con men who hoped to dump tons of nuclear waste on a Pacific Island….

Money and politics make for strange bedfellows but the nuke deal was put together by what must surely rank as one of the most bizarre beltway coalitions of all time: a volatile Englishman who sometimes poses as a rock star, a retired CIA official, a self-described flower-child-turned investment banker, and a well-known friend of Bill.

The corporate vehicle for the plan is U.S. Fuel and Security Inc (USF&S), a Washington-based firm. The company’s CEO is Daniel Murphy, a lobbyist who formerly served as deputy director of the CIA and chief of staff to George Bush when the latter was vice president. Murphy carried out a variety of murky activities while in government, once accompanying the notorious influence peddler Tongsun Park to meet with then President Manuel Noreiga of Panama. . . .

The firm has recruited a number of heavy hitters to its cause. USF&S’s counsel to retired Secretary of State James Baker. Former FBI Director William Webster sits on the advisory board of International Fuel Containers, a corporate subsidiary that plans to build huge steel containers to store the nuclear waste.

Mark Grobmyer, a Little Rock lawyer and golfing partner of President Clinton’s, has vigorously lobbied the White House on the company’s behalf. . . .

For more GO TO > > > The Nuclear Nests; Predators in Paradise

Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and Hand – The nation’s #1 lobbying firm.

From The Money Men: . . . The number one lobbying firm— Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand— acquired its marquee names over a relatively short stretch in the mid-1990s. They included two former Senate majority leaders, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, and a former treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen. . . .

Even though they are prohibited by ethics laws from lobbying their former colleagues for a year after they leave the Hill, ex-lawmakers were still in high demand. The reason: their job was to manage entire persuasion campaigns, not just to beg for favors themselves. . . .

Size didn’t matter when it came to lobbying-company clout. Verner Liipfert had 185 lobbyists and lawyers, but Barbour Griffith employed just thirteen.

* * *

PROFITING FROM 9-11?

From O’Dwyer’s PR Daily – (www.odwyerpr.com):

April 9, 2002

VLBM&H REPS AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan is using Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand in its effort to build a political and economic infrastructure.

The firm of former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and George Mitchell is counseling the interim government on legislative, trade and investment matters on a pro-bono basis.

Peter Pantaleo, President of the D.C. lobbying firm, wrote a letter to Afghan charge d’affaires Haron Amin saying that his firm is “honored to be of service to the Interim Authority, as well as to the Transitional Authority to be established by the Emergency Loya Jirga” which is expected to set up a more permanent government when it meets in June.

For more on Bob Dole and George Mitchell, GO TO > > > The American Red Double-Cross; Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate

~ ~ ~

Pitches Montenegro independence

Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand also renewed its $20,000 a-month contract with Montenegro, which is Serbia’s junior partner in Yugoslavia.

The firm is trying to promote better ties between the two republics so Montenegro can break away from its larger rival.

The firm is to inform U.S. opinion-makers about Montenegro’s politics, military and security concerns, human rights issues, anti-corruption efforts and economic developments.

~ ~ ~

April 18, 2002

DOLE LOBBIES FOR MALAWI

Former Majority Leader Bob Dole is lobbyist for Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations.

His firm, Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, is receiving $300,000 in annual fees from the country, where the average life expectancy is 37 years for both men and women. Malawi’s ten million people face an HIV/AIDS epidemic, deforestation and erosion among other problems.

VLBM&H’s contract calls for it to promote a “greater and deeper appreciation and recognition in the USA of Malawi’s role as a friend and economic partner of the USA.”

It will work “diligently to secure USA businesses and individuals to invest in and visit Malawi and purchase Malawian goods and services at favorable prices.”

Malawi’s agricultural-based economy is driven by the growth of tobacco, sugar, tea, corn and cassava.

~ ~ ~

March 26, 2002

ETHIOPIA SPENDS BIG AT VLBM&H

Ethiopia spent a whopping $5.6 million in lobbying fees/expenses at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand during the firm’s recent six-month reporting period.

India, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mexico, China, Montenegro and Slovenia combined for another $1 million.

For Ethiopia, VLBM&H provided advice on the peace treaty with Eritrea, and explored commercial opportunities for Ethiopian businesses in the U.S.

On the downside, VLBM&H was terminated by Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

President Bush plans to send a contingent of special forces to that Arab nation to wipe out suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

* * *

April 10, 1996

Former Hawaii Republican Party Chairman to join Washington Law Firm

By Rick Daysog, Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Former Hawaii Republican Party Chairman Jared Jossem plans to join former Gov. John Waihee as a local partner in a Washington, DC, law firm.

According to a source close to the deal, Jossem will join Verner, Liipfert Bernhard McPherson Hand.

Besides Jossem and Waihee, the firm’s big-name recruits include former Land Use Commissioner Renton Nip and Norma Wong, former Office of State Planning deputy director in the Waihee administration….

Jossem, a longtime partner in the firm of Torkildson Katz Jossem Fonseca Jaffe Moore & Hetherington, declined comment on the matter. He took over as GOP chairman in 1991 and stepped down in 1994….

Besides Honolulu, Verner Liipfert has offices in Houston and Austin, Texas. Locally, the firm has represented Bishop Estate in its lobbying efforts in Washington. The firm lobbied under contract for the state Department of Transportation on aviation, highway and mass transit funding issues.

Last year, Gov. Ben Cayetano canceled that nonbid contract, saying the circumstances surrounding it created the appearance of impropriety.

Waihee and the law firm, which earned some $1 million in fees from the contract, insisted the contract was proper….

* * *

The Buying of the President 2000: . . . Elizabeth Dole raised only $3.5 million through the first half of 1999. Her husband’s prestigious Washington law firm, Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and Hand, is the top patron of her current campaign . . .

* * *

Equity No. 2048 – In the Matter of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Report of Master Regarding Retention of Non-Staff Counsel, filed 5/18/00: . . .

Prior to August 1998, Verner Liipert, a Washington D.C. based law firm which employed former governor John Waihee was retained to do certain legal work.

From other pleadings filed in this matter we know that central to that retention was lobbying by the firm on the issues of intermediate sanctions and/or trustee compensation.

It is also known from other pleadings that that firm was compensated for work done on investigating the feasibility of changing the domicile of the trust from Hawaii to a Souix River Indian Reservation….

Minutes of a Special Trustees’ meeting of Sept 9, 1998 authorized instructing John Waihee to “transfer all files on the matter of Trustees lobbying efforts on Intermediate Sanctions legislation” to Hawaii for review by other lawyers, including “point person” William McCorriston. In addition, Verner Liipfert lawyer Sue Temkin was to come to Hawaii “as soon as possible to explain and elaborate on the lobbying efforts”. This was in response to Master Matsumoto’s request for information on the subject and the right to review the files.

However, it is clear from a review of all of the 1998 invoices that even before August 1998 Verner Liipfert was aware that the Attorney General had subpoenaed its files and was involved in efforts to not produce its files. As time progressed this firm did everything possible to delay production and, then, to attempt to limit the scope of that production. This Master reviewed the following invoices: . . . $347,564.09 TOTAL.

This entire amount should be surcharged to the Trustees. . . . Further, the bills do not contain charges for John Waihee, even though he clearly spent time on the file matter. If he was compensated in some other way or at a different time, that sum should be included in the surcharge total. . . .

It is not overstatement to say that there was nothing of legal substance in the work done in 1998 by this firm. Rather, it simply represents the formulation and implementation of a strategy to delay and obstruct, discussed ad nauseum among a large number of firm personnel, including the central involvement of N. Wong, S. Temkin and J. Waihee….

Simply stated, as one proceeds through the billing records one is left with the inescapable conclusion that legal work being done was of no benefit to the trust. Rather it was designed solely to address allegations of past misconduct or at least errors of judgment made by the individual trustees with regard to the earlier retention of this firm.

The goal of the work was to attempt to formulate a strategy to prevent or limit disclosure….

For more, GO TO > > > Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate; Broken Trust-The Book; Buzzards of Paradise; Lost Generations; The Puna Connection

###

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Last updated October 20, 2006 by The Catbird