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Today's
Stories
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
October 19, 2004
Party Favors
The
Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
By
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
In May 1999, the Labor Department brought
suit against Jack Moore and John Grau, charging the two men with
mismanaging the pension fund for the International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers. Moore was the longtime secretary of the
union, while Grau was the vice-president of the National Electrical
Contractor's Association, which was partner in the fund. At issue
was a series of sweetheart real estate deals in central Florida,
which regulators labeled "imprudent", and cost the
fund money. Moore and Grau eventually settled the case for more
than six figures. The union was forced to kick in another $5
million to cover the losses to the pension fund. The person at
the center of the scandal, however, made out in the deal very
well, indeed. His name: Terry McAuliffe, now head of the DNC.
McAuliffe met Moore in 1988,
when both were raising money for the doomed presidential bid
of Dick Gephardt. They became close friends, allies in a campaign
to redesign the Democratic Party into a more moderate political
vessel, along the lines of the pre-Reagan Republicans. Moore
controlled the $6 billion IBEW pension fund and had a reputation
for investing money in businesses run by friends and political
cronies.
So it was that in November
1990, McAuliffe approached Moore and his friend Grau with a proposal
for a real estate partnership in central Florida with an investment
company called American Capital Management, which McAuliffe owned
with his wife Dorothy. The deal involved the purchase of the
Woodland Square Shopping Center and five apartment complexes
outside Orlando, Florida. It was a lopsided partnership. The
pension fund put up $39 million to purchase the property. McAuliffe
shelled out $100, yet he and his wife enjoyed 50 percent ownership
in the project. He eventually parlayed his $100 investment into
a $2.45 million profit.
Fresh from this triumph, McAuliffe
approached Moore with a new proposal. He asked Moore to dip into
the pension fund one more time for $6 million so that he could
purchase a parcel of land south of Orlando called Country Run,
which McAuliffe planned to subdivide into 500 single-family homes.
Moore obliged and loaned McAuliffe the money. The development
soon proved to be a bust. Only half the homes were built and
many of them didn't sell. Years passed, but McAuliffe never bothered
to make a single payment to the pension fund on the loan. According
to Labor Department records, McAuliffe was in default from December
1992 through October 1997. The managers of the pension fund never
demanded payment or called in the loan. The only collateral they
had required was the nearly worthless Country Run property itself.
Eventually, McAuliffe found
a buyer for the property and repaid the loan. But the aroma of
the deals attracted the attention of the Labor Department, which
had been looking into the looting of worker pension funds. In
May of 1999, the agency brought a suit against Moore and Grau
for mismanagement of the fund. Both eventually settled, agreeing
to six figure fines, and resigned
their positions. The IBEW was compelled to reimburse the pension
fund to the tune of five million dollars. The Labor Department
didn't have any authority to go after McAuliffe. That was up
to the Clinton Justice Department and they took a pass. He wasn't
sued or otherwise inconvenienced. So a labor fund got looted
and Terry McAuliffe got very rich.
This wasn't the only time McAuliffe
steered a labor union toward dangerous legal and financial shoals.
In 1996, McAuliffe helped devise a political money-cycling scheme
that led to the downfall of several leaders of the Teamster's
Union, including the union's reform-minded president Ron Carey
and his political director William Hamilton. At Hamilton's trial
on corruption charges, Richard Sullivan, the former director
of finance for the Democratic National Committee, testified that
McAuliffe asked Sullivan and other top DNC fundraisers to approach
big Democratic donors who could make at least a contribution
of at least $50,000 to the re-election campaign of Ron Carey,
then in a pitched battle with James Hoffa, Jr. Under McAuliffe's
scheme, Sullivan testified, the Teamster's Union would later
recycle that $50,000 back into various Democratic Party accounts.
Once again, McAuliffe was never charged with wrongdoing and his
lawyer, Richard Ben-Veniste, repeatedly said there's was nothing
illegal in his client's plan. He lives a charmed life.
* *
*
Terry McAuliffe was born in
1957 in Syracuse, New York. His father was a longtime Democratic
powerbroker in upper state New York and a top fundraiser for
the party. Terry got into politics at a young a young age. But
as anyone can tell there's not much evidence that he was ever
excited about policy issues. The environment, abortion rights,
civil rights, peace. These great issues didn't turn Terry on.
Instead, he was entranced by the mechanics of political fundraising,
party planning and schmoozing with business elites and Hollywood
celebrities.
He made a beeline for the Beltway,
attending Catholic University. Through his father's influence,
he got a position as a fundraiser for Jimmy Carter. And then
he was off and running, renting his financial services to House
and senate races and gubernatorial elections.
In the meantime, McAuliffe
managed to earn the obligatory law degree from Georgetown University.
Then in 1984, he began to fine-tune his craft under the wing
of Tony Coelho, the longtime House whip and master fundraiser
from California. At the time, Coelho was heading up the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, the main DNC fundraising apparatus
for House races.
More than anyone, Coelho laid
the foundations for the Democratic Party's open courting of big
business. And Terry McAuliffe, working from the master's Rolodex,
served as Coelho's chief apprentice, sprinting from one Beltway
lobby shop to the next offering prime access to Democratic powerbrokers
for political cash, hard and soft money, the new coin of the
realm.
The young fundraiser learned
an early lesson. No enterprise was off-limits, no matter how
tarnished the reputation of the company: weapons-makers, oil
companies, chemical manufacturers, banks, sweatshop tycoons.
Indeed, McAuliffe made his mark by targeting corporations with
festering problems, ranging from liability suits to environmental
and worker safety restraints to bothersome federal regulators.
The more desperate these enterprises were for political intervention,
the more money McAuliffe knew he could seduce into DNC coffers.
What about environmental groups? Big labor? The traditional core
of the Democratic Party? Not only didn't their objections (assuming
they voiced any) matter, they actually made McAuliffe's pitch
more appealing to the corporadoes. After all, the Republicans
didn't have any sway over these organizations. Triangulation,
the backstabbing political playbook of Clintontime, originated
as a fundraising gimmick. A very lucrative one.
In the early 90s, really big
money began to pour into the DNC. McAuliffe recruited robust
donations from Arco and Chevron, Entergy and Enron, Phillip Morris
and Monsanto, Boeing and Lockheed, Citibank and Weyerhaeuser.
Many of these corporations had all but abandoned the Democrats
during the Reagan era. McAuliffe lured them back with promises
of favorable treatment by a new generation of anti-regulatory
Democrats attuned to the special needs of multinational corporations.
This was the mulch bed from which the Clinton presidency took
root.
By 1994, Clinton himself had
aligned himself to McAuliffe's magic touch. He tapped him as
the chief fundraiser for the 1996 reelection campaign. In this
capacity, McAuliffe masterminded some of the more risqué
political fundraising operations since the Kennedy era. There
were the fundraisers at Buddhist temples in California. There
were the notorious coffee klatches, where for a six-figure contribution
to the DNC, corporate executives were brought to the White House
for some face-time with Bill and Hillary, Al and Tipper, and
a retinue of cabinet secretaries, with pen in hand ready to address
any nagging problem. McAuliffe also devised the plan to rent
out the Lincoln Bedroom to top contributors for slumber parties
with the president.
Over the course of the next
six years, McAuliffe was personally responsible for raising,
largely from corporate sources, more than $300 million for the
DNC.
* *
*
The scene: the MCI Center in
Washington, D.C. The date: May 14, 2000. The Event: "BBQ
and Blue Jeans Gala." It's Terry McAuliffe's biggest party
yet. A star-studded gathering of DC lobbyists, corporate executives
and Hollywood liberals, all in dressed in blue jeans, eating
BBQ and listening to the blues and country music. It was also
the single biggest fundraiser in history. More than $25 million
was raised for the DNC in a single night.
Toward the end of the evening,
Al Gore lumbered his way onto the stage and seized the microphone.
He directed the spotlight turned on McAuliffe, the real star
of the evening. "Terry", Gore said, "You are the
greatest fundraiser in the history of the universe." The
crowd thundered with applause for the man who had just lightened
their wallets of several thousands of dollars.
Gore would soon come to rue
those fervent words. While most Democrats blamed Katherine Harris
or the Supreme Court for the loss of the White House to George
W. Bush, McAuliffe pointed the finger at Gore. The fundraiser
believed that Gore ran an inept campaign, misspending the precious
millions he had worked so diligently to raise. McAuliffe detested
the way that Gore distanced himself from the Clintons and refused
to allow the president to campaign for him even in key southern
states. Even worse from McAuliffe's perspective, Gore had subtly
dissed Clinton on the campaign trail, suggesting that he himself
was a man of firmer moral sinew than the embattled president.
When Gore lost, the party fell
back into the control of the Clintons and their chief emissary,
Terry McAuliffe. The fundraiser swiftly took his revenge out
on Gore. In late January, as the moving vans where pulling away
from the White House, McAuliffe planned a major send off for
the Clintons at Andrews Air Base. All the top Democrats were
there; many were invited to give tributes to the first couple
in front of the national TV cameras. Al Gore, naturally, expected
to give the keynote farewell address. But McAuliffe refused to
allow Gore even near a microphone. Gore wasn't permitted to speak
a single word. "McAuliffe didn't want Gore to speak",
a top aide at the DNC told the Washington Post." McAuliffe
didn't even want Gore there. The send off was about good memories,
success stories. And the VP wasn't either."
McAuliffe's implacable loyalty
to Clinton was soon rewarded. Later in 2001, Bill Clinton engineered
the ouster of Joe Andrew as head of the DNC and installed McAuliffe,
who only months earlier had offered to purchase the Clintons
a house in Chappaqua, New York for $1.3 million, as the chief
of the party. As the head of the DNC, McAuliffe was now in a
position to protect the Clintons' legacy, reward loyalists, punish
party dissidents and select the next presidential nominee.
When Gore began to flirt with
the notion of challenging Bush in 2004, McAuliffe went to work
to kill off his campaign before it even started. He went straight
to Gore's top political sponsors and advised them to withhold
funds from the Gore campaign chest. He was tremendously persuasive,
convincing even some of Gore's most loyal backers, such as financier
James Tisch, to deny money to their old friend.
The sabotage of the nascent
Gore 2004 campaign was just a run-up for demolition job McAuliffe
directed against the unauthorized campaign of Vermont governor
Howard Dean. The Dean threat had almost nothing to do with any
perceived ideological heresy from the Vermonter. After all Dean
was a run-of-the-mill neoliberal who pretty much aped the centrist
economic policies of Clinton. The real threat posed by Dean came
from his determination to raise millions in campaign contributions
outside of the precincts of the DNC. McAuliffe's control over
the party stems from his role as the prime dispenser of campaign
cash, the elixir necessary to keep political recipients loyal
to the party leadership and its policies. Dean showed another
way was possible and he had to be put down.
But after the Dean juggernaut
was scuttled, McAuliffe reached out a helping hand to the defeated
candidate. As usual, the hand proffered money. The Dean campaign
was in debt, the legions of Deaniacs seething with rage over
the demolition of their hero. McAuliffe offered to help pay off
Dean's debts and set up his new institute, Democracy for America.
In return, Dean worked to calm his troops, imploring them not
to abandon the party for the independent campaign of Ralph Nader.
* *
*
Terry McAuliffe didn't just
use his business contacts to fatten the accounts of the Democratic
National Committee; he also deftly exploited them to inflate
his own fortune, which now nudges toward nine figures. A similar
fruitful intimacy with corporate cronies led to Tony Coelho's
stunning fall from grace, but McAuliffe never looked back. His
trajectory has been decidedly prosperous and, to this point,
utterly immune to the slumping fortunes of the economy outside
the confines of the Beltway. These days McAuliffe says he wants
to resurrect the Misery Index, but he's not acquainted with any
of the numbers.
In 1996, McAuliffe met a young
corporate tycoon named Gary Winnick, who had once referred to
himself as the richest man in Los Angeles. Winnick ran Global
Crossing, a fiber-optics company chartered in the tax-friendly
haven of Bermuda. At the time McAuliffe met Winnick, Global Crossing
was a privately held company, poised to cash in on the deregulation
of the telecom industry and the new opportunities in China. In
1997, Winnick offered McAuliffe the opportunity to purchase $100,000
worth of Global Crossing stock.
When Global Crossing shares
went public in 1998, the value of the stock soared. Operating
with an acute sensitivity to the fluctuations of the market bordering
on ESP, McAuliffe sold his shares at the precise moment the stock
peaked. McAuliffe told the New York Times he pocketed $18 million
in the deal. Within a few months, Global Crossing's stock collapsed,
the company plunged into bankruptcy and more than a third of
its workforce were tossed into the ranks of the unemployed.
McAuliffe also served as an
on-call DC fixer for Winnick in those optimistic days following
the Clinton reelection. In early 1997, McAuliffe set up shop
in an office in downtown DC owned by a Winnick company called
Pacific Capital Group. According to a boastful McAuliffe, Winnick
hired him as a consultant to "help work some deals"
with the federal government. "Gary was looking for some
political action", McAuliffe told Worth magazine.
"He wanted a stable of people around him with great contacts."
Few people inside the Beltway
enjoyed better contacts than McAuliffe, as Winnick would soon
discover. At an appearance in Los Angeles later that year, Bill
Clinton lavished on Winnick his personal endorsement. "Gary
Winnick has been a friend of mine for some time now and I'm thrilled
by the success that Global Crossing has had."
There's no evidence that Winnick
and Clinton had even met each other before that evening. But
the endorsement proved fruitful. It signaled not only Clinton's
faith in the company, but also sent a message to federal agencies
that Global Crossing was a firm that they should do business
with. It soon paid off. A few months later Global Crossing won
a $400 million contract from the Pentagon after repeated prodding
from the White House.
After the contract was awarded,
McAuliffe arranged for Winnick to play a round of golf with Clinton.
Shortly after the afternoon on the links, Winnick donated $1
million to the Clinton presidential library.
Winnick's joy was short lived,
however. In the winter of 2001, the Pentagon rescinded the Global
Crossing deal following an investigation by the Inspector General
of the Defense Department, which raised questions over how the
contract was awarded and Global Crossing's ability to fulfill
its obligations. Later, the company fell into the financial death
noted above.
The attack dogs in the Bush
White House never really made much of McAuliffe's ripe ties to
Global Crossing. Why? Global Crossing had been almost equally
generous to the Bush family.
In 1997, Global Crossing invited
former President George H.W. Bush to address company executives
in Tokyo, Japan. At the time, Bush's standard speaking fee was
$80,000. The morning after the speech, Bush had breakfast with
Winnick. Winnick advised Bush that it would prove much more profitable
for the former president to accept payment in Global Crossing
stock, then privately held, than cash. Bush agreed. Soon the
company went public and the value of Bush's stock swelled to
more than $14 million. Not a bad pay-off for an hour's speech.
To complete the symmetry, one of Winnick's top executives also
serves as a trustee of the G.H.W. Presidential Library Fund.
Winnick tried to cover all
of his bases. Yet as with Enron and Tyco, even the most judicious
dispensation of money across the political spectrum couldn't
save a company that had been looted from the inside out. Global
Crossing went down and so did Winnick. But the politicians who
made it all possible remain indemnified from any liability for
the carnage, protected by a mutually advantageous non-aggression
pact.
Never bite the hands that feed
the system.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature
and co-editor, with Alexander Cockburn, of Dime's
Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils, from
which this profile of Terry McAuliffe has been excerpted.
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
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