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Ärende: The Clintons
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http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2006/03/02/188380.ht
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The Clintons of Dubai
Mar 2, 2006
by Robert Novak ( bio | archive )

WASHINGTON -- While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President 
Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing 
for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the 
deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) 
his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for 
the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. 

 The Lockhart deal was never consummated. But the spectacle of the two 
Clintons going in opposite directions on the UAE port-management 
question exposed a Democratic fault line. Widespread public reaction 
against outsourcing control of the ports was seen by Sen. Clinton and 
other prominent Democrats as a chance to outflank the Republicans on 
homeland security in this year's elections. Behind the scenes, however, 
Democrats aligned with the Clinton family were lobbying for the UAE. 

 The lineup over the DP World raises questions about how Bill Clinton's 
free and easy political manner will impact his wife's prospective 
presidential campaign for 2008. Highly disciplined Hillary Clinton plays 
politics by the numbers, following a carefully plotted strategy. Her 
husband's freewheeling, intuitive style was typified when he tried to 
secure a well-paid assignment for his friend and valued aide, Joe 
Lockhart, who now heads a Washington-based media firm. 

 
 According to well-placed UAE sources, the former president made the 
suggestion at the very highest level of the oil-rich state. The 
relationship between him and the UAE is far from casual. The sheikdom 
has contributed to the Clinton Presidential Library, and brought Clinton 
to Dubai in 2002 and 2005 for highly paid speeches (reportedly at 
$300,000 apiece). He was there in 2003 to announce a scholarship program 
for American students traveling to Dubai.

 Certainly, the emirs would pay the closest attention to any request 
from the former president. Lockhart did confer with DP World officials, 
but they failed to reach agreement. The UAE sources said that Lockhart's 
asking price was much too high. 

 Lockhart did not flatly deny to me that Clinton had made a pitch for 
him, but instead said he did not know whether the former president was 
involved. Lockhart said he was recommended by another Clintonite: Carol 
Browner, the former Environmental Protection Agency chief and now a 
principal in the Albright Group lobbying firm. Headed by former 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the company is representing DP 
World. Lockhart told me "money was not the problem" as he turned down 
the offer. 

 UAE sources, contending that Lockhart priced himself out of the market, 
asserted there was no question but that Clinton had intervened on his 
behalf and added it was not possible that Lockhart had not known about 
his former chief's intervention. When I sought comment from Clinton, his 
press spokesman, Jay Carson, said: "I don't know for sure, but I don't 
know him to generate employment even for someone he likes and admires as 
much as Joe Lockhart." 

 While Lockhart may have been a bridge too far for DP World, the UAE has 
reached out to high-priced Washington lobbyists on both sides of the 
aisle (including Republicans Bob Dole and Vin Weber). Leading the way in 
putting together the port deal was Jonathan Winer, a leading Democratic 
lobbyist who spent 10 years as Sen. John Kerry's aide. Winer's associate 
at the Alston & Bird law firm supporting DP World is Kathryn Marks, who 
was policy director for then Sen. John Edwards. Former Democratic Rep. 
Tom Downey, chairman of his own lobbying firm, is also on the Dubai 
team. 

 In contrast to Democratic operatives working behind closed doors are 
Democratic lawmakers attacking the ports deal in the open. Speaking to 
the Jewish Community Relations Council at Manhattan's 92nd Street YMCA 
on Sunday, Sen. Clinton went beyond questions of homeland security. She 
called the Dubai deal "emblematic of a larger problem" of ceding "some 
of our fiscal sovereignty."
 
Does that put the Clintons on a collision course? Not exactly. Having 
failed privately to hook up Lockhart with DP World, the former president 
publicly turned on his old friends from the UAE last Friday in a speech 
at Auckland, New Zealand. DP World, he said, "is from UAE, where some of 
the money from 9/11 was laundered." If Democrats in general are divided 
publicly and privately on this issue, so is Bill Clinton as an 
individual. 

Robert Novak is a television personality and columnist.  Novak is also 
editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report available through a free 
offer from Human Events Online.


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