By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 12 June 2007
Following a report by Truthout, a Washington, DC watchdog group recently issued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records of contacts between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and a high-ranking Republican campaign strategist and public relations consultant.
Recent documents released to Congressional investigators revealed that public relations expert Mark McKinnon engaged in high-level consultation with the White House after the US attorney firing situation began to boil over. McKinnon, a well-known campaign strategist for the GOP, corresponded in his official capacity as vice chairman of Public Strategies Inc., a corporate public relations firm, with Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. The Office of Strategic Initiatives is an executive branch think-tank which "plans, develops and coordinates a long-range strategy for achieving presidential priorities," and "conducts research and assists in message development," according to the White House web site.
In his email, McKinnon asked Wehner for help in response to a critical article written by Salon.com columnist Joe Conason on Friday, February 9. The following Monday, McKinnon wrote to Wehner asking, "Do we have something off-the-shelf on this?"
Wehner forwarded McKinnon's inquiry to White House Associate Counsel Christopher Oprison, one of the main lawyers involved in the White House message coordination with the DOJ regarding the attorney firing scandal. In Wehner's email, he includes a caveat that seems to signal that he understood the potentially unethical consequences of bringing an outside public relations expert into the mix: "Would you, [or] somebody at DOJ, be able to send along to me a response to the charges by Joe Conason, which I could pass along to Mark McKinnon? I'd be grateful if you could - and I'd understand if you can't."
Based on reporting by Truthout, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an FOIA request to the DOJ. The request states that CREW "seeks all emails sent to or from Mark McKinnon [and/or any individuals associated with its companies] and any former or current DOJ employee in the Offices of the attorney general, deputy attorney general and/or associate attorney general, concerning any aspect of the Congressional inquiry into the firing of US attorneys." The FOIA can be accessed at the CREW web site.
Despite documented communication with McKinnon, FOIA requests cannot be issued to the White House because the Freedom of Information Act applies only to federal government agencies. No response from White House officials to McKinnon was included in the documents released by the DOJ, but McKinnon confirmed to Truthout that he received "talking points they were using on the Hill and public testimony" from the White House. McKinnon claims that he has not had any contact with the DOJ.
The Bush administration has a history of paying public relations consultants to help with political messaging. In 2005, during the Bush administration's attempt to privatize Social Security, it was revealed that the administration paid public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard nearly $1.8 million to help trump-up the risks faced by the Social Security system. The Bush administration also came under fire for hiring the public relations firm Ketchum to coordinate messaging for the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As part of a contract agreement between the Department of Education and Ketchum, the popular African-American pundit Armstrong Williams "would regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts, and would work with African-American newspapers to place stories and commentary on NCLB." Williams was paid $240,000 for his advocacy of the program. Jill Bratina, a former employee of Ketchum, was later hired by McKinnon's public relations firm.
In response to a previous Truthout report, McKinnon claimed that he was "not a consultant to the White House," and had "never been paid a dime by the White House or the Republican National Committee." According to McKinnon, he sent an email to the director of the top White House strategy office asking for a "response to Joe Conason's article because he was 'curious about what the facts were,'" and that the White House staff didn't do "anything for me that [they] wouldn't have done for any other citizen."
McKinnon's campaign strategy company, Maverick Media Inc., was a primary benefactor of the 2000 and 2004 Bush campaigns; Bush spent $170 million with McKinnon's firm during the 2004 election cycle. Previously, McKinnon worked as a media consultant for Democrat Ann Richards in her 1990 and 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaigns. Richards was defeated in 1994 by Bush. After the defeat, McKinnon switched sides and went on to help Bush to reelection in 1998. Bush has called McKinnon "a trusted ally," and said he was "particularly impressed by [McKinnon's] honesty," according to the Public Strategies Inc.'s web site. A scandal involving McKinnon erupted in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election. In preparation for a debate between then Vice President Al Gore and then Governor Bush, McKinnon videotaped a Bush practice debate session. This tape, along with 120 pages of debate preparation documents, were then sent to Gore campaign adviser Tom Downey. The Gore campaign immediately alerted the FBI, who began an investigation. A Maverick Media employee under McKinnon, Juanita Yvette Lozano (also a former Richards campaign staff member), eventually pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury during the investigation. A surveillance tape from the post office from which the package was sent clearly depicted Lozano with a package in tow. She falsely claimed that the package she was mailing that day was a pair of khaki pants from the GAP that she was returning on McKinnon's behalf. Lozano was sentenced to one year in prison followed by three years probation for her attempt to cover up her involvement in the leak. McKinnon was not accused of any crime.
While some critics attempted to pin the motivation behind the leak on the Gore campaign, others asserted that this was a dirty trick on behalf of the Bush campaign staff to try and entrap the Gore campaign. After the investigation, the FBI concluded that Gore's campaign staff had acted appropriately.
The emails released by the DOJ show that McKinnon's request for information on the attorney firings was addressed by the DOJ Liaison to the White House Monica Goodling. Goodling sent the White House counsel's office a list of talking points intended to counter claims that the spate of attorney firings were politically motivated. Goodling did not indicate that the information had yet been made public; instead she wrote: "It is info we have given to friendlies on the Hill. It can all go [to McKinnon]." The email chain can be read at the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's web site.
Goodling's credibility was severely damaged when she testified under immunity before the House Judiciary Committee on May 23. Goodling admitted that she "may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account" when selecting non-political career positions in the DOJ. As of this writing, CREW has not received a response to their FOIA request from the DOJ. The White House has not returned repeated requests for comment on this situation.
Matt Renner is a reporter for Truthout.