Yesterday, MoveOn.org's ad spotlighting the top lobbyist on John McCain's campaign, Charlie Black, began running on nation wide on cable stations. We've posted the video of the ad a couple times. It's a very hard hitting ad documenting Black's work for some very despicable despots including Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire and Jonas Savimbi from Angola. You can see the ad here.
Today, Charlie Black's lobbying on behalf of those shady characters -- and a couple others -- warrants a front page article in the Washington Post:
Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is John McCain's man in Washington, a political maestro who is hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November.Apparently, there was very good money in representing brutal dictators, if you didn't mind the blood all over it.
But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi's man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black's contacts in Congress and the White House.
Justice Department records that Black's firm submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act detail frequent meetings with lawmakers and their staffs and lavish spending by Black and his partners as they attempted to ensure support for Savimbi, whose UNITA movement was fighting the Marxist Angolan government.
Then in his 30s, Black already had established himself as a pioneer of the revolving door between campaign consulting and lobbying, having been a senior adviser on President Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign before returning to K Street. And his clients, as often as not, were foreign leaders eager to burnish their reputations.
In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
John McCain wanted everyone to think he was some kind of maverick who was going to change Washington. McCain never was a maverick. In fact, he's just a puppet of the GOP's hard core lobbyists. They run his campaign. They'd run his White House.
