[ UPDATE: This story needs all the media air it can get - so please VOTE IT UP on Digg ! Here are current Digg posts on this scandal which your votes can help push towards mainstream media recognition:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
ThinkProgress's story on this adds some important material and has a picture of Payne clearing brush with Bush. The Booman Tribune has an excellent analysis of this breaking story at http://www.boomantribune.com/... but directly linking to it from here provokes a mystery redirect. If you just copy & paste that URL you'll get there though - BW ]
"The Logan Act is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. It was passed in 1799 and last amended in 1994. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years." - Wikipedia, on The Logan Act
Reporters from the UK Times have videotaped Bush Administration friend and operative Stephen P. Payne, a man who has cleared brush with George W. Bush himself, on Bush's ranch, attempting to sell access to the White House to representatives of a foreign nation's former president: donate several hundred thousand dollars to the planned George W. Bush Library currently slated to be established (along with an embedded, partisan think-tank) at Southern Methodist University in Texas and we'll get you in the door. That was the offer. Does Stephen P. Payne have any ties to presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain ? Curious minds want to know...
This post starts with the gathering Payne scandal but towards the end of the post I describe my new series, to be launched today on the Huffington Post, which outlines the threat to American Democracy posed by an influence peddling ring even bigger (by far) than Stephen P. Payne's tawdry, unethical and probably illegal operation, a influence peddling ring with international reach and which has been burrowing, for decades, into the very hear of American power. But, first, to the Payne scandal.
Here's what Stephen P. Payne and his Worldwide Strategic Partners have to offer:
Does your government need relief from billions of dollars in foreign debt ?
Does your military need to buy some U.S. F-16 fighter jets, C-130 transports, U.S. made military helicopters or night vision equipment ?
Does the President of your dictatorship require a special summit at Camp David ?
Does your corrupt and brutal West Asian dictator [accused of ordering wholesale torture but that's not a problem given that George W. Bush has done the same thing] need the PR boost of a public endorsement from US Vice President Dick Cheney ?
Step right this way. Worldwide Strategic Partners can arrange that, and more, for a reasonable fee.
Stephen P. Payne is connected and he can make things happen for your corrupt dictatorship, big things. For a fee. How connected is Payne ? Very connected:
Here's Payne's corporate resume' and what his firm was able to do for the government of Pakistan, from Payne's formerly confidential Worldwide Strategic Partners corporate advertising brochure [ PDF of brochure ]
Stephen P. Payne
Governmental Affairs Consultant Representing:
Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, Pakistan, Azerbaijan Morgan Stanley, SAP Software, & Continental Airlines
- The White House; Senior Presidential Advance Representative: Traveled with
President Bush to Jordan for the Red Sea Summit in June 2003, with Vice President Cheney to the Middle East in 2002 & 2005, Korea in 2004, Kazakhstan in 2006, and Afghanistan for the historic inauguration of Afghan President Karzai
- Board Member: National Defense University Foundation
- Deputy Director and Congressional Liaison: 2001 Presidential Inaugural Committee
- June 2007 appointment to the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee
- Vice Chair, United States Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison 2000 & 2006 Campaigns
- Member, Homeland Security Advisory Council, member of Rice/Chertoff Commission on Visas, and Border protection and also a member of the Essential Technologies Task Force of DHS
- 2006 NATO Summit in Riga, Latvia, lead a think tank conference panel discussion on energy security and chaired a NATO Future Leaders Forum comprised of leaders from thirty-five NATO member and partner countries
Now, consider what Steven Payne's group was able accomplish for the government of Pakistan:
Pakistan : an International Relationship Transformed
Helped Pakistan negotiate a 5-year, $3 billion dollar aid package from the United States.
- Coordinated the removal of economic and military sanctions imposed on Pakistan under the Clinton Administration : Secured Pakistan the prestigious-"Major Non-NATO Ally Status" including : Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Kuwait, Argentina and the Philippines.
- At the request of the Pakistan Government, beginning November 2002, the Team began laying the ground work to secure an "invitation initiated by the White House" for a one-on-one meeting between President Musharraf and President Bush outside of Washington, D.C . As a result of the Team's continual conversations over the period of several months, with the highest levels of the U.S. Administration The Team arranged for the meeting at the prestigious and high profile location of Camp David: an unprecedented scheduling accomplishment.
- Assisted with a U.S./Pakistan Free Trade Agreement. Coordinated, structured and implemented a comprehensive plan to release Pakistan from US, IMF, World Bank debt through grants, aid, debt forgiveness, debt rescheduling and guarantees.
- After intensive coordinated efforts, Pakistan was finally able to purchase F-16 fighter jets (previously canceled under the Clinton Administration) and secured the delivery of C-130 transport aircrafts, helicopters and night-vision equipment from the U.S. to fulfill Pakistani military requirements.
". . . It gives me great pleasure to thank you for playing such an important role in strengthening US Pakistan ties . . .The challenges faced by both our countries in the aftermath of September 11th, brought us even closer, in which you played a pivotal role . . ."
-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
Letter to Stephen Payne, Dated January 21, 2006. . .
Very impressive and highly illegal as well. I wonder how much Payne's Worldwide Strategic Partners earned for those efforts ?...
If Democrats in Congress have any huevos* they'll be convening hearings on Steven Payne's pay-for-play shadow state department scam this coming Monday the moment Congress opens for business. I don't believe any of the myriad of scandals to have oozed out of what may come to be regarded as the most corrupt Presidency in American history, bar none, has carried such potential.
Payne's business is the quintessence of what's wrong with the Bush Administration and American Democracy; government in secret, by and for the wealthy and powerful. The Watergate scandal involved merely the attempted subversion of the US electoral process, but PayneGate represents a much more basic subversion and corruption of American Democracy because democracy can only function to the extent that it is transparent.
*note: because "huevos" is Spanish for "eggs", the term is gender neutral. It can be take as "balls" or as "ovaries" and generally means "courage".
*****
If Congressional Democrats do not take full advantage of the Payne scandal we will know that American Democracy is more compromised than we ever imagined, because PayneGate is not labyrinthine. One can sum it up in a sentence that can be piped out, via mainstream media, right into the ears and minds of average Americans everywhere who, though they be scrabbling for economic survival amidst a Bush-generated economic disaster, will instantly get it: Bush's own secret 'pay for play' private state department. Bush buddies turned U.S. foreign policy into their personal cash cow.. It's that simple.
We always suspected as much, but several intrepid UK Times reporters have peeled the lid off a cesspool of a sleazy and in fact illegal (per the Logan Act) influence-peddling ring that the Bush Administration has allowed to function as shadow state department, playing a quasi-governmental role in brokering international deals and granting access to the US White House and more... for a fee.
And we can well imagine that a portion of torrents of cash flowing through Steven Payne's corporate bank account went to Bush friends and family, to Cheney friends and associates, to GOP related efforts, campaigns, dirty tricks... the possibilities are endless, and this would have been nothing new back in the days when European monarch ruled under the presumed Divine Right of Kings; of course royalty and its minions could demand money for access to power. That's how it worked. But since the Enlightenment, with its ethic of human equality, since the advent of democracy, we were supposed to have moved past the 'divine right' of monarchs.
Consider Steven Payne's sales pitch:
"The images on the tiny screen of Stephen Payne’s personal organiser told a clear story: this was a man with connections at the highest level.
One showed Payne uprooting dead trees side by side with George W Bush on the US president’s Texas ranch. Another depicted him skeet shooting next to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and a third grinning for the camera alongside Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state."
There's some speculation that George W. Bush goes off the wagon during his unusually (some would say embarrassingly) long summer vacations so it's not out of the realm of possibility that Steven Payne is a drinking buddy of the President too, but regardless one can say with confidence that anyone granted, as Steven Payne has been granted, privilege to clear brush with Bush is no casual associate of the man, once called The Shrub, who has changed the course of world history...
From the confidential corporate brochure of Steven Payne's "Worldwide Strategic Partners" one gets the sense that under George W. Bush the US State Department was in effect privatized such that power brokers like Payne got rich selling White House access to the highest international bidders.
The UK Times expose' on Payne's influence peddling conspiracy has huge implications that may not be initially be fully recognized, either in mainstream media or in the Blogosphere, but that's OK; with some time the import of the UK Times story will sink in. Here's what Steven Payne had to offer his international clients:
Worldwide Strategic Partners, Inc. is an international relations and energy development corporation focused on diplomatic, strategic and military negotiating while maintaining positive government relations between the host nation and the United States. Specializing in diplomacy,international energy development, debt restructuring, military and governmental contracting, our combined experience is truly world
class.
Yes indeed, it was. And to the extent American Democracy has a shred of integrity left, Stephen P. Payne belongs in a world class prison.
____
Beyond PayneGate: The Family
Beyond Paynegate there's an even huger scandal inherent to the practices of a shadowy fundamentalist group, literally "at the center of power" as Rolling Stone journalist Jeff Sharlet's book title, in The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism At The Hear Of American Power would imply:
The Family is the distillation of secret government by and for the rich, and the group, with it's "prayer circles" and prayer cells has its hooks so deep into not only the Washington elite but also international elite classes that the fact three out of the five US Supreme Court justices who shut down the Florida vote recount, through their legally incoherent decision in Bush v. Gore. were deeply associated with The family.
But that fact is almost a distraction because The Family isn't a conspiracy at all. Far from it, and I'll be launching a series on that today. We must consider the meaning of the fact that, beyond Justices Rehnquist, Thomas and O'Connor, who formed the rump faction of the Supreme Court 5 justice bloc that shut down the Florida recount in the 2000 election, many of the other key players in the 2000 election and the legal battle that followed were also associated with The Family at far-less than casual levels.
Al Gore, and James Baker (who supervised the Bush campaigns post-election legal strategy), were both in Family leader Doug Coe's personal prayer circle; the Community Bible Study groups, one of which in Midland, Texas brought a struggling oilman named George W. Bush to God, were in part a Family initiative; The legislative antecedent to The Faith Based Initiative which made the FBI possible, "Charitable Choice", was both conceived of and politically promoted by Family members and "friends", both Republicans and Democrats; the Democratic Leadership Council, whose founding membership ranks were thick with Family members and "friends", appears to be very close to a secular extension of The Family because many of the DLC's core ideas are expressions of The Family's core ideological agenda that's carried through from the group's inception, as a union-busting association of big West-Coast Seattle businessmen brought together, in Abraham Vereide's "prayer circle", to worship a new sort of Jesus, a corporate and business friendly Jesus who patiently listens to the pain and suffering of America's elite, to it's guilt and moral failings, and absolves it of sin. As an institution which has burrowed into the Washington DC power structure so deeply that for decades Family leader Doug Coe has been able to arrange private face time with America presidents, and no money passes hands, directly, for the privilege but the quid pro quo economy is inherent to that nonetheless, and so the Family amounts to the absolute subversion of American and World Democracy, and the Democratic principals on which the United States was founded.
In my series commencing today, in advance of next week's Netroots Nation conference, I will be mapping out, in detail, the extent to which many of the leading Democrats of the past 2 and 1/2 decades have been enmeshed socially and ideologically with The Family and have push legislative agendas promoting key elements of the Family agenda - destroying the New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, radically shrinking the federal government and destroying church-state separation. Under the mantle of the Democratic Leadership Council "centrist" Democrats have been pushing what is in essence and elitist, far right agenda tied to an elite fundamentalism and group conceived of back in the 1930's, by a Norwegian minister who admired Hitler and sought to fight communism by uniting America's ruling elite under a new understanding and way of worshiping Jesus, Jesus Plus Nothing.
The Family is a way of life and a way of doing business and politics, in secret, but it's more than that. The Family is a religious sanctification of the divine right of rulers and big business to dominate and rule in secret, a global association of leaders who buy into, at varying levels, the notion that they are wealthy and powerful because God wants them to be so.
The Family has flourished because it's been largely unnoticed. Secrecy, and secret government, is the enemy of democracy and, conversely, to the extent the Family gets public notice its influence will diminish in a similar manner as do many life forms, which thrive in darkness but shrivel in the light of day.