WHEN Hillary Clinton
professed to be furious about Mark Penn's lobbying for the Colombia
Free Trade Pact, did she realize that she's up to her ears in lobbyists
for foreign entities? Many of her top advisers and strongest
supporters are registered lobbyists for foreign governments and
corporations - and many may have gotten lucrative clients via referrals
from Bill Clinton himself or by advertising their close connections to
the couple.
Start with Colombia.
Bill Clinton met with
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on March 26, 2007, at the 80th
birthday party for Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Ten days later, on April 5,
ColombiaProExport signed a $40,000 a month contract with the Glover
Park Group - a lobbying firm often called "the Clinton White House in
exile."
Its partners include Hillary Communications Director
Howard Wolfson (now on a leave of absence from the firm) and several
other former Clinton administration aides. Former Hillary campaign
manager Patti Solis Doyle used to work there, too.
A few weeks later, Penn's firm, Burson MarSteller, signed a $300,000 contract on the Colombia trade deal.
According to one high Colombia official privy to Bill Clinton's private
conversations, the former president urged Colombia to shift its focus
from GOP legislators to Democrats (who'd taken control of Congress) and
then made phone calls to two Democratic congressmen.
How did
the Colombians end up hiring lobbying firms with close ties to the
Clintons' political operations? It's doubtful that they used the yellow
pages.
But Colombia wasn't the only country to hire Clinton-linked lobbyists right after a visit from the former president.
On Feb. 27, 2005, Bill Clinton gave a speech in Taiwan and had dinner
with the country's president. On April 15, Glover Park was hired to
lobby for the Taiwan Cultural and Economic Minister at $25,000 a month.
Before then, it had relied on Republican Bob Dole.
Remember the Dubai Ports deal? Bill Clinton was caught advising the
Emir of Dubai on how to handle Congress at the very same time that
Hillary was blasting the deal.
We've since learned that Bill's
in a partnership with the sheik and Yucaipa's Ron Burkle. The Clintons
won't say how much of his $15 million from Yucaipa came from Dubai, but
we know that Bill looks out for its interests.
When the Port deal ran into trouble, Bill recommended that Dubai
hire Glover Park. Shortly afterward, Glover Park was retained to
represent Dubai on another deal - routed through a law firm, making it
harder to track the Dubai connection. The partner handling the Dubai
account? The brother of Neera Tanden, Hillary's policy aide.
There's more: Dubai Aerospace
hired Glover Park for $250,000 and the firm of Quinn, Gillespie for
$240,000. Jack Quinn is the former counsel to Clinton who engineered
the pardon of fugitive billionaire Mark Rich. Quinn's firm is owned by
WPP, the company that owns Penn's Burson Marsteller.
When the
emir and his brother were sued in Miami in a class-action claiming that
they had kidnapped young boys to train as camel jockeys, the Dubai
lobbying efforts kicked into high gear. DLA Piper, whose lobbyist
partners include two Hillary mega-bundlers, was hired to convince the
Bush administration to intervene in the lawsuit.
Johnson,
Madigan, which often partners with Harold Ickes in lobbying for New
York earmarks, was also paid $800,000. (They were also retained on the
Colombia deal.) The suit was dismissed. Among the senators who met with
the DLA Piper lobbyists on the issue: Hillary Clinton.
Frequently, the agendas of these lobbyists directly contradict Sen.
Clinton's positions. While Hillary has often criticized the outsourcing
of American jobs, Glover Park was paid $120,000 to push for a Defense
Department award to the French company Airbus. Quinn's firm got over
$600,000 on the deal. Stonebridge International, headed by former
National Security Council Adviser and Hillary confidante Sandy Berger
got $180,000.
The Clintons are now suffering politically for
their lobbyist ties. But the links are far deeper and more profitable
than has been known.