Blackwater's New Mercenaries: DC's Most Powerful Lobbyists

[babylonsister]

Blackwater Mounts a Defense With Top Washington Talent

By JOHN M. BRODER and JAMES RISEN
Published: November 1, 2007


WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Blackwater Worldwide, its reputation in tatters and its lucrative government contracts in jeopardy, is mounting an aggressive legal, political and public relations counterstrike.

It has hired a bipartisan stable of big-name Washington lawyers, lobbyists and press advisers, including the public relations powerhouse Burson-Marsteller, which was brought in briefly, but at a critical moment, to help Blackwater’s chairman, Erik D. Prince, prepare for his first Congressional hearing.

Blackwater for a time retained Kenneth D. Starr, the former Whitewater independent counsel, and Fred F. Fielding, who is now the White House counsel, to help handle suits filed by the families of slain Blackwater employees.

Another outside public relations specialist, Mark Corallo, former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft, quit working for Blackwater late last year because he said he was uncomfortable with what he termed some executives’ cowboy mentality.

Blackwater is pursuing a bold legal strategy, going so far in a North Carolina case as to seek a gag order on the lawyers for the families of four Blackwater employees killed in an ambush in Falluja in 2004. The company argues that the dead men had signed contracts that prohibited them from talking to the press about Blackwater and that this restriction extended to their lawyers and their estates even after death.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01blackwater-sub.html?hp

[madrchsod]

1. is there any reason to trust anyone who is involved with these people?

"Mark J. Penn, Burson-Marsteller’s chairman and a senior adviser to -->Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign,<-- said in an e-mail message that he had --->no direct contact<---- with Blackwater and that the work was landed by BKSH, a subsidiary. BKSH is a political consulting firm led by Charles R. Black Jr.,---> an adviser to President Bush and his father, and R. Scott Pastrick, a top Democratic fund-raiser.<----- Mr. Penn said that a BKSH associate had worked briefly in Iraq and met several Blackwater personnel, who steered the work to his firm."

[babylonsister]

2. This is really incredible; connect the dots indeed. nt

[karynnj]

4. Newsmeat shows that R. Scott Pastrick ,

whose contributions are listed under Bethesda Maryland, Alexandria Virgina, and DC, was a long time Gephardt supporter, who is mostly giving to Dodd this time. He has contributed to many many past campaigns, including HRC and Biden. (In 2004, he gave money to Kerry on 3/22 - a few weeks after Kerry became the de facto candidate.)

He has been a Democratic Party official for years and many things he was involved with are good.
Here's a link to his biography:
http://www.bksh.com/scott-pastrick.html

For what it's worth, he is the son of long time East Chicago, Indiana Mayor, Robert Pastrick. (East Chicago has a political machine that is as dominant as Daley's ever was in Chicago. East Chicago is a steel mill town, home to mills belonging to US Steel, Inland and others.)

"That fateful chance appeared in 1999. Sautter talked with Scott Pastrick, one of the Mayor’s six children who was then on the national staff of the Democratic Party, and Frank Pannos, the former Indiana Democratic state chair. “They told me that the mayoral race in East Chicago was going to be a real race.” Pastrick’s opponent would be his long-time political foe and former chief of police Stephen Stiglich. Although Stiglich lost decisively in the previous contest four years earlier, he had taken control of the Lake County party chairmanship that Pastrick had held for 25 years."
http://www.lakemagazine.com/magazine/article.asp?articleid=LID-128-DJJI6-20042048

Here is some background on East Chicago and its mayor -
http://nwitimes.com/articles/2004/08/26/news/top_news/c3a1dba770573a6586256efc000b8429.txt

The point of this is that as Penn is linked to HRC and the article identifies him as a Democratic fund raiser, there is a possibility of misreading him as a Clinton person. His involvement in Democratic politics stems from before the Clinton era. His roots are the labor based East Chicago, Indiana machine - though only by growing up there. (Though he himself left that area after college and law school, it may explain his allegiance to Gephardt.)

[madrchsod]

5. thanks for the info

[mod mom]

6. It's as crazy as trusting Carville as a strategist with his wife belonging to the dark side.

I'm sorry but just having a D after one's name isn't good enough for me. Clinton on Wal-Mart board, DLC ties to PNAC, Clinton voting for both IWR and Kyl Lieberman, Clinton-largest recipient of lobbyist contributions, Chief strategist making money with the same "cancer" destroying this country. Too close for comfort in my estimation!

Why do we need another corporate water carrier? It'stime for a president who works for the best interests of the American PEOPLE! not the robber barons.

[begin_within]

3. If they aren't put out of business soon, they will end up becoming the "state"

A "state" is that which has a monopoly on the use of force. At least according to Max Weber. It's clear now that Blackwater wants to become an independent, worldwide army, answerable to nobody except whoever pays them.

[Beelzebud]

7. Mercenary armies should be illegal...