bushlibrary.thumbnail.jpgBy now, you’ve probably heard something about lobbyist Steve Payne and his unfortunate run-in with the Times of London (a Murdoch paper, of all things)

Do you want Vice President Dick Cheney’s undivided attention for an hour? Stephen P. Payne, a Texas-based lobbyist, has some advice about how to grease the wheels for such a meeting: Make a six-figure donation to the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a library and museum complex that is scheduled to be built at Southern Methodist University.

When Mr. Payne made that suggestion in a London restaurant last week, he thought he was talking to an agent of the exiled president of Kyrgyzstan. He was actually speaking with undercover representatives of The Times of London, which has posted a video of the encounter.

“I think that the [exiled president’s] family, children, whatever, should probably look at making a contribution to the Bush library,” Mr. Payne says in the video. “How big, I don’t know. It would be like maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars, something like that. Not a huge amount, but enough to show that they’re serious.”

Payne was pretty specific about what the money would buy his putative client (a rather unpopular and questionably Democratic fellow who used to run Kyrgyzstan)

Asked by an undercover reporter who the politician would be able to meet for that price, Payne said: “Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible . . .

“The main thing is that he [the Asian politician] comes, and he’s well received, that he meets with high-level people . . . and we send positive statements made back from the administration about ‘This guy wasn’t such a bad guy, many people have done worse’.”

The White House says they wouldn’t ever and totally didn’t and practically don’t know the guy anyway:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said face time with the president isn’t used to entice library donors.

"There’s categorically no link between any official business and the Bush library," she said.

Ms. Perino wasn’t sure whether Mr. Payne ever brought clients to the White House for meetings.

"He’s been a Republican fundraiser for many years, so I believe the president has probably met him on a number of occasions," she said. "But he was never an employee of the White House, and so I don’t know particularly about any contacts that they would have had."

Only, yeah, it looks like he sort of did work for, if not the White House, the people in the White House, and he was maybe just a bit more to the Bush administration than just a fundraiser*

According to a cached copy of Payne’s curriculum vitae that I found on the Worldwide Strategic Partners website (now scrubbed), Payne claims to have been George W. Bush’s personal travel aide during his father’s 1988 Presidential campaign. Payne served as Senior Advisor to the NASA Administrator on White House and Congressional Affairs in 2001, according to the same document.

If even half of what Stephen Payne says about himself is true, there is no question that he had acces to the highest levels of the Bush administration. Payne was a Bush Pioneer in 2000 and 2004. He was also a member of Bush Cheney 04, George W. Bush for President, and Tom DeLay’s Congressional Committee.

If the old Worldwide Strategic Partners [Payne's company] website is to be believed, Payne has accompanied Bush and Cheney on offical trips, as well as served as an advance man for them: "Currently, Mr. Payne assists the White House as a Senior Advance Representative traveling internationally in advance of and with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, including trips with President Bush to Jordan for the Red Sea Summit (Mid-East Peace Summit), and with Vice President Cheney to the Mid-East, Korea, Kazakhstan, and to Afghanistan for the historic swearing-in of President Hamid Karzai."

…

When it comes to Republican bona fides, Polland’s website bio says it all: "Gary is on a first name basis with President Bush (he is called "Chairman"), his political alliances are widespread from the White House, where he is friends with key Presidential assistants like Karl Rove to United States Senators Cornyn, Graham, Hutchison, and Kyl; and to House leaders like Eric Canter and Ted Poe. In Texas, Gary is an advisor to the GOP and its statewide office holders. Gary is also a key fundraiser for Republicans and is responsible for raising more than $3.35 million for Republican candidates and causes during the last ten years." Polland is also a McCain fund raiser.

And has intervened with his many friends in the Republican party on behalf of foreign governments before:

According to the same bio page and a WSP brochure obtained by the Sunday Times, Payne personally advised General Pervez Musharaff and helped secure billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan.

Quite successfully, by some accounts

Dos [the man Payne was negotiating with] had good reason for believing that Payne could [get the White House to support his client]. Payne has accompanied Bush and Cheney on foreign trips to the Middle East and Asia, and he sits on the influential advisory council to the Department of Homeland Security. Payne is also president of a lobbying company, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP), which specialises in connecting business and political interests with the US government.

…

The Sunday Times had initially approached Dos earlier for help in investigating corrupt practices in his homeland of Kazakhstan. Many business deals there are said to involve the discreet transfer of money between figures high up in the Kazakh regime and western companies.

Dos is exiled from Kazakhstan after setting up his own political party, Atameken, at the end of 2006. He was forced to flee following threats to his life.

Before that happened, however, he acted as an adviser to Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, and a man of considerable influence within the country.

Dos said that in the autumn of 2005 he had been asked by the Kazakh government, via Kulibayev, to arrange a visit by Cheney. The intention was to improve the country’s international standing.

Dos had spent several days negotiating with Payne. A deal was eventually agreed, he said, and he understood that a payment of $2m was passed, via a Kazakh oil and gas company, to Payne’s firm.

The following May, Cheney made a brief trip to Kazakhstan. His visit was remarked upon in the media at the time, both for the lavish praise which he publicly heaped on Nazarbayev and for the stark contrast between this and a speech he had made just a day earlier at a conference in Lithuania in which he had lambasted Russia for being insufficiently democratic. Now he was lauding Nazarbayev, who has effectively made himself president for life and in whose country it is an offence to criticise him….

Payne, who had confirmed to Dos that he had organised Cheney’s visit, denied having received any payment from any entity connected to Kazakhstan, although he admitted having been paid to help other foreign interests in the past, including people from Pakistan and Azerbaijan.

But, you know, discreetly:

American law states that anyone representing a foreigner for political reasons must register as an agent. Failure to do so is punishable by a fine or jail.

Payne and WSP do not appear to have registered much of their work for foreigners with the Department of Justice.

Payne said WSP’s work for Azerbaijan was nonpolitical, but its brochure says that it “implemented an aggressive media campaign to discredit the Azeri opposition”.

Mr Payne was asked today to step down from… wait for it…

Department spokeswoman Laura Keehner confirmed to United Press International that Stephen Payne was asked to resign. […]

“The department asked him to step down” from his post on the Secure Borders and Open Doors Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, Keehner said, declining to comment on the reasons.

Tomorrow’s late night: Mr. Payne, Mr. Hunt, Boeing, the library, and the fence.

*Kudos to Lindsay, who’s the only one who had some of this