Hillary Clinton found herself defending her chief strategist Friday after The Associated Press reported that the public relations company Mark Penn runs had helped prepare the chief of the controversial military contractor Blackwater USA for his congressional testimony.Clinton reportedly owes Penn 5.4 million dollars for campaign work, while Burson client Blackwater still has a multi-million dollar contract to protect US State Department officials. Does this look like a manifest conflict-of-interest for a potential Secretary of State?
“Mark Penn did no work on the Blackwater account,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Friday afternoon.
Burson-Marsteller, of which Penn is Worldwide President and CEO, “has cut its ties to Blackwater and that was the right thing to do. Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team,” Wolfson said.
Penn’s unusual dual role as corporate executive and presidential strategist has been a running source of distraction for Clinton’s typically single-minded campaign. Though her supporters believe that voters will ultimately be unlikely to make their choice based on the actions of a consultant who is little known outside political circles, Penn has drawn a steady stream of criticism from other campaigns and from key Democratic groups.
Labor leaders objected to his firm’s work against union organizing, and Burson-Marsteller’s work for clients that include the tobacco industry and a leading, troubled subprime mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, have also drawn fire.
“Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism, because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush. I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton’s primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove — his firm is representing Blackwater,” former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said in Iowa Friday.
This story is the first of a drip-drip-drip. While Bill might be powerful enough to pull strings to get her the job, IMHO Hillary honestly should not be able to pass any reasonable person's "smell test" for the position of Secretary of State..
