21287: Marina: Aristide Lobbied To Get U.S. Acquiescence -Wall Street Journal (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marina <marinawus@yahoo.com>

Aristide Lobbied To Get U.S. Acquiescence to His
Murderous Regime
Originally: Winning Hearts and Minds
Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal,
2004-04-11


April 9, 2004; Page A9

Venezuela has retained the Washington law firm Patton
Boggs to give its image a Washington make-over. "We
are advising them to improve U.S.-Venezuelan
relations," a consultant at the firm says.

This is hilarious. Imagine all the suits in the
boardroom thinking real hard about how to get
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to lose the red beret
and stop referring to George Bush, on national
television, as an uncomplimentary part of the human
anatomy.

Of course that's no small job, which may be why Patton
Boggs, which says it signed up the Embassy of
Venezuela in September 2003, is raking in a fee that
annualizes at more than $1 million a year. The firm
wouldn't speak about that obscene figure. "That's your
job," I was told when I asked the price. But U.S.
Justice Department filings show that, in the last
three months of 2003, Venezuela coughed up $309,992
for Patton Boggs's help. In the same filing, Thomas
Hale Boggs Jr., the Boggs of Patton Boggs, reports
that on Sept. 25, 2003, he gave the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee $10,000. Mr. Boggs and
other employees of the firm made contributions to a
variety of other candidates -- including Bush-Cheney
'04 -- of up to $2,000, but Mr. Boggs' gift of $10,000
stands out for its generosity.

Now, as more than a few cynics put it last year when
former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack
Kemp showed up at the Journal flacking for the Chavez
government, everybody has to make a living. No
grown-up is going to have a fainting spell over
revelations that K-Street lobbyists are doing what
they do, even if it is for bad actors like Mr. Chavez.

On the other hand, a little transparency -- beyond
obscure filings at the Justice Department -- is in
order. The reason Chavez influence peddling is so
disturbing is that it is nearly the same strategy that
Haitian tyrant Jean Bertrand Aristide used to get U.S.
acquiescence to his murderous behavior for a decade.
We know how that one turned out.

Haitians finally chased Mr. Aristide out of the
country six weeks ago. But Americans are now paying a
price for the benign approach taken by the U.S. at the
behest of his friends and business associates in
Washington. At this very moment over 1,900 U.S. troops
are in Haiti trying to disarm violent militias and
restore the peace. Secretary of State Colin Powell was
in Port-au-Prince on Monday and said he is concerned
about the private armies Mr. Aristide left behind.

How did Mr. Aristide, who was a known practitioner of
violence get the U.S. to restore him to power in 1994
and then to tolerate his malevolence for 10 years? The
answer is that he bought influence in Washington in
much the same way Mr. Chavez is trying to do now.

Former Congressman Ron Dellums, Randall Robinson's
wife Hazel Ross-Robinson and Florida lawyer Ira
Kurzban are all crying the blues over Mr. Aristide's
demise but not because of what the little defrocked
priest did for Haitians. What each of these Washington
operators lost at the end of February was an
all-you-can-eat meal ticket.

U.S. Justice Department records show that the firms of
Mr. Dellums and of Ms. Ross-Robinson and Mr. Kurzban's
law firm were all big beneficiaries of Mr. Aristide's
influence buying in Washington. The Washington Times
has reported that Mr. Dellums, who threw his weight
around with the Congressional Black Caucus on Mr.
Aristide's behalf, received $571,326 in 2001 and 2002
from the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. The
story also said that Ms. Ross-Robinson took in
$367,967. Still, those two were under-performers
compared to Mr. Kurzban, whose work for Mr. Aristide
from 1997 through 2002 yielded, according to the Times
report, $5.38 million.

Lobbyists make their livings lobbying, of course. But
these sizable fees paid by a desperately poor nation
hearken back to Christopher Caldwell's observations on
Mr. Aristide as a Washington operator in the July 1994
American Spectator. In that story Mr. Caldwell
detailed the Haitian's skill in working the U.S.
capital: "How the administration came to condone and
promote this kind of slow-motion Great Terror -- that
is, how Aristide's policy became our policy -- is a
story of the distortions that result when virtually
the entire budget of a sovereign nation is funneled
into a massive Washington lobbying and
public-relations campaign."

Mr. Chavez has big bucks too and far more dangerous
predilections. Like Mr. Aristide he has armed
paramilitaries to enforce his rule. But there are also
reports that he has been giving safe haven to
Colombian guerrillas inside the Venezuelan border, and
that he has been funding radicalized Indian militants
in Bolivia. The evidence spilling out in Washington
suggests that the Patton Boggs strategy involves
getting policy makers to disbelieve what has been
reported from the region. The consultant I spoke to
said the plan involves lobbying U.S. congressmen and
"could" involve calling on the State Department, the
Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Agency and
the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs.

It's pretty clear, though, that Patton Boggs sees
Senate Democrats as the flabby, soft underbelly of
U.S. foreign policy, starting with Connecticut Senator
Chris Dodd. As the ranking member on the Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee for the Western
Hemisphere, Mr. Dodd defended Mr. Chavez in April 2002
when the Venezuelan military removed him rather than
follow his orders to attack a crowd of civilian
demonstrators. When an Inspector General's report
cleared the Bush administration of any role in that
event, Mr. Dodd retreated in silence on the subject of
Venezuela.

Dispassionate observers give chances for the Patton
Boggs mission long odds. U.S. policy makers will
balance the lobbyist claims against all the evidence
that trusting Hugo Chavez is a bad idea. Nevertheless,
it's an election year and Democrats have a mighty
interest in restoring their power. That means they
need money and they need to show that George Bush is
in trouble in the world. What is worrying is that Mr.
Chavez might be able to help them with both.



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