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Last Updated: Jul 15, 2008 - 11:12:59 AM |
Stephen Payne, a major GOP fundraiser and international affairs
lobbyist, also touted his success in getting an Uzbek opposition leader
removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list and issued a U.S. visa.
"This is a horribly unfortunate story," said Homeland Security
spokeswoman Laura Keehner. "We are looking into the facts." She
declined to comment further.
Payne was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council's
subcommittee on "secure borders and open doors" by Secretary Michael
Chertoff in August last year.
Last week, he was videotaped by the London Sunday Times offering to
arrange meetings for an exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan,
including with Vice President Richard Cheney, national security adviser
Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"The exact budget I will come up with," Payne said, "but it will be
somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going
directly to the Bush library."
Payne, who believed he was meeting with a representative of former
Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, ousted in a people power-type revolution
three years ago, called the money "not a huge amount but enough to show
that they're serious."
In fact, he had been set up by the intermediary, Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov,
known as Eric Dos, a Kazakh politician with whom he had worked before,
and was secretly taped by an undercover Sunday Times reporter.
Monday afternoon, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Payne, saying that
he would investigate the allegations.
"If true, this report raises serious concerns about the ways in which
foreign interests might be secretly influencing our government through
large donations to the library," wrote Waxman.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters "There's
categorically no link between any official business and the Bush
library," stressing that Payne "was never an employee of the White
House."
In a statement, Payne, who has served as a volunteer advance travel
planner for White House trips abroad and accompanied Cheney to the
inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, called the report a
"worst-case example of 'gotcha' journalism."
"The (Sunday) Times attempted to entrap me," he said, denying there was
any quid pro quo for the donation.
Payne released a series of e-mail exchanges that followed the meeting,
which, he said, "in contrast to the surreptitiously taped conversation
… reflect the basis of the more formal discussion and reflect the
inquiries made by Mr. Dos to establish a quid pro quo and my consistent
responses that there could be no quid pro quo."
"Anyone that tells you, 'I can deliver a U.S. government action in
exchange for specific funds' is someone you will soon visit in prison,"
he told Dos in one of the e-mails. "That would be bribery in this
country."
"The Sunday Times of London has done an injustice in undertaking a
false and malicious expedition to discredit my company and me," Payne
concluded in his statement.
In promotional materials marked "confidential" that he later said were
in draft form, Payne touted his work with an Uzbek opposition leader in
a section titled "From alleged terrorist to U.S. ally -- The
transformation of Muhammad Salih."
Salih, an author and opposition leader who stood unsuccessfully against
Uzbek strongman Islom Karimov in the country's first presidential
election in 1990, and afterwards was first jailed, then placed under
house arrest, has lived in exile since 1992.
In 1999, he was tried and convicted in absentia by an Uzbek court of
involvement in a series of terrorist bombings in the capital, Tashkent.
Although some international observers questioned the trial's fairness,
Salih was placed on the U.S. terrorism watch list and an Interpol
warrant was issued for his arrest.
According to Payne's promotional materials, his company, Houston-based
Worldwide Strategic Partners Inc., "worked with the White House and the
Departments of State and Justice to facilitate the removal ... from the
terrorist watch list and the waving of the Interpol warrant" for Salih,
and helped secure him a visa to visit the United States.
According to the non-profit Texans for Public Justice, Payne was a
Bush-Cheney campaign "Pioneer'' -- supporters who helped raise at least
$100,000 -- during the 2000 election, and a "Ranger" -- bringing in
$200,000 or more -- during the 2004 campaign.
Democrats leaped on the report as an example of the kind of corrupt
practices that brought down former House Speaker Rep. Tom DeLay,
R-Texas.
Matt Angle, of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic political research
and analysis group, called Payne "a junior league Jack Abramoff," a
reference to the disgraced GOP lobbyist, jailed for corruption.
"He has built up influence as a major fundraiser for the president,"
said Angle of Payne. "It certainly appears as if he is peddling it."
"You count on the integrity of public officials," Angle told UPI. "If
they are willing to use themselves as props to enrich a lobbyist, as
Tom DeLay let himself be used by Abramoff, and as it appears Cheney was
willing to be used by Payne … that (integrity) is in question."
"It really looks like the administration is selling out to the highest
bidder," added Scott Amey, general counsel of the non-partisan Project
on Government Oversight. "This case presents the disgusting side of
government that we hope only appears in Hollywood. We need an audit of
domestic and foreign policies to make sure they are not based on a
large campaign or library contributions."
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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