Mark Penn is Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and pollster. He is responsible for crafting her message.
Everyone knows about Penn's connections to union busting and Blackwater.
Well, now we can add to this impressive resume meddling in Pakistani elections on behalf of a thoroughly corrupt figure.
The ugly details below the fold.
As we all have read, Pervez Musharraf as imposed martial law in Pakistan. Pakistan is a country of the utmost strategic importance, and the right balance of cooperation and pressure must be used to ensure that it grows into a stable democracy. And, whoever is President will have to exercise clear-headed, sound judgment for the sake literally of the entire planet.
Therefore, it is deeply disturbing that Mark Penn's lobbying and polling firms are taking fat monthly checks from Benazir Bhutto, a main rival of Musharraf.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani opposition party, led by Bhutto, has retained public relations giant Burson-Marsteller and its affiliates, the lobbying firm BKSH & Associates, and the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. The firm declined comment on its activities, which it is charging an initial $75,000, to be followed with monthly payments of $28,500.
The contract filed with the Justice Department does, however, give some insight into what all of the money buys. Among the promised services: surveys of "100 American political, journalistic, and business elites in Washington, D.C., and New York"; an "internal brainstorming session"; and setting up meetings for Bhutto in Washington "with an eye towards convincing U.S. officials that Prime Minister Bhutto is still relevant to further the democratic process in Pakistan."
Let us be clear what is going on hear. The chief strategist for Hillary Clinton is also involved with efforts by a foreign political party to gain influence in Washington D.C.
And, not just any political party or figure. Benazir Bhutto is
notoriously corrupt.
The French, Polish, Spanish and Swiss governments have provided documentary evidence to the Pakistan government of alleged corruption by Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.[13]
A 1998 report[14] indicates that Pakistani investigators have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zadari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari. The article also said a Dubai company received an exclusive license to import gold into Pakistan for which Asif Zardari received payments of more than $10M into his Dubai-based Citibank accounts. The owner of the company denied that he had made payments to Zardari and claims the documents were forged. The paper also said that Zardari's parents, who had modest assets at the time of Bhutto's marriage, now own a 355-acre estate south of London. The estate has been auctioned through a court order.
Awful.
Aside from the International Culture of Corruption this points to, this is disturbing in other ways:
- How can Hillary Clinton claim to have clear, unbiased judgment on Pakistan when her chief strategist has a vested interest in seeing one party return to power there? Is she issuing statements because that is what she believes, or because her chief strategist is biased in that regard?
- If Bhutto does return to power, will she not be seen as a puppet of Hillary Clinton in Pakistan and elsewhere?
- US lobbying firms working on behalf of foreign governments trying to influence US policy is bad enough. But, this unseemly fusion between lobbyist/PR and political figure is incredibly damning. Is Benazir Bhutto effectively getting a 2-1 deal on her money? Mark Penn is available to the highest bidder--do we really want someone whose business it is to shill on behalf of loathsome figures and who is a conflict of interest with feet shaping the policy of our next nominee?
Ugh.