allbaugh, diane

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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sorta forgot about this power couple; this page some overflow for Joe</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wife:</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump, Rove, Norton, Barbour, Brulte = Inside Bush's Indian Bureau</b>&nbsp;- A labyrinth of lobbyists is manufacturing millions</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Barrett, Jennifer Suh - April 27th, 2004 - http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,barrett,53013,1.h...</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Wayne Smith ... the '90s, he'd been chief deputy to California's Republican attorney general ... at 52, he was assistant deputy secretary at Interior, managing the $3.5 billion budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and overseeing the hotly politicized Indian casino industry ...</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... in his new job—which he got on the recommendation of a colleague from his AG days, Sue Wooldridge, top aide to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Neal McCaleb, who was Smith's immediate boss and ran BIA, put him in charge of gaming ... BIA remained a bureaucratic land where the only chiefs are buttoned-down lobbyists, raking in millions from tribes whose casinos are virtually franchises to print influence-peddling largesse.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Smith was troubled early ... his office was lobbied on behalf of two tribes by Diane Allbaugh, the wife of Joe Allbaugh, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 2000 national campaign manager for Bush.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Diane Allbaugh, who worked at a firm headed by former Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;appeared on behalf of a Louisiana casino developer under contract with the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians and the Paucatuck </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Eastern Pequots, a Connecticut tribe then tied to Donald</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Trump. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">McCaleb urged Smith to take her calls, explaining that he and Joe Allbaugh were old Oklahoma friends and that Allbaugh had "helped convince the White House" to install him at BIA.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">... lobbyist who concerned Smith more than any other ... he'd been on the transition working group for Interior, staffing the agency. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The dark force of Indian gaming, retained as a hidden consultant by tribes and developers across the country, was <b>Roger Stone,</b> a veteran of eight Republican presidential campaigns and star of the Miami/Dade recount shutdown. Scott Reed is often his up-front lobbyist face.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Reed began leaning on Smith in late January 2002. Smith even got a note supporting the Stone faction from the Republican leader of the California state senate, Jim Brulte. Stone had recommended the retention of a consulting firm owned by Brulte's former chief of staff, Tom Ross, and Ross wrote the memo summarizing the Buena Vista case that Brulte enclosed. Later in 2002,<b> Stone would host a fundraiser for Brulte at his 40 Central Park South apartment and take Brulte to visit Stone's longtime client Donald Trump. </b>The Brulte intervention sent a particularly strong message to Smith because he'd attended a 2001 Palm Springs meeting involving Karl Rove and a dozen tribes, where Brulte was introduced as "the administration's main man in California—especially for Indian matters." .</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ggle doc:</font></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-76e4a65d-85d7-c22a-7ed8-5b804b73e5da"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DIANE</span></font></font></font></font></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nepotism augments revolving door: common to hide assets and associations by putting them in the name of spouse/kids (also will be built-in dummy officers in bogus corporations) [can also be part of “pension plan” sinecure package? &nbsp;spouse gets job at think tank or board?], same with political contributions to get around limits, Gramms, Thomas, Allbaugh raise to an art form with catastrophic ripple effects.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second wife, Diane, is an Austin lawyer.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">---</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Once he left FEMA, he moved quickly to make up for years of privation in the public sector, forming the Allbaugh Company with his wife, Diane, an attorney.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diane Allbaugh had begun laying the groundwork from the moment they arrived in Washington, D.C., repeating a pattern she’d established in Texas. In the summer of 1996, just a year after moving to the Lone Star State, Diane had signed on as a lobbyist with a number of large corporate clients, mostly energy firms, with pressing business before the state, while her husband held a highly visible position as the governor’s top aide. When the newspapers reported the story, Governor Bush’s office hastened to announce new rules, and Diane declared an end to her lobbying career. However, she was soon ensconced in a ‘non-lobbying’ position with a law firm representing some of the same companies. Now, in Washington, she jumped into the K Street fray, becoming “of counsel” to</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">which Fortune magazine described at the time as the </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">country’s most powerful lobbying firm.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shop’s founder, </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Haley Barbour</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, who would figure prominently in the Allbaughs’ improving financial prospects, was the very definition of a self-dealer. After founding the firm, he stayed involved with it while playing a key role in the </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">privatization </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of government services as chairman of the Republican National Committee during Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” [written by Norquist?] revolution, then served as chairman of Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign advisory committee [see also Transition team, includes Stone?]. He left the company in 2003 to mount a successful run for governor of Mississippi--where he ended up on television talking about how his citizens were suffering from </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Katrina.</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No one thought to point out how the </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allbaugh-Brown-Barbour model of disaster management </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">had set the stage for the calamity.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A cynic (or a realist) might formulate that model like this: Why spend resources to prevent disasters, when there’s so much money to be made cleaning up after them?</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider the trajectory of </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shaw Group,</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a Baton Rouge engineering and construction firm, and one of Allbaugh’s biggest clients....</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">---</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 2000 </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Allbaugh</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> became the Bush-Cheney national campaign director.</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Cheney and Allbaugh reportedly grew so close that, after the election, Cheney sold his opulent Washington townhouse to Allbaugh, for just $690,000. That same year, </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Bush appointed Allbaugh director of FEMA. During his tenure, Allbaugh slashed the professional staff, and turned over much of FEMA’s work to private contractors</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The year before Allbaugh took over FEMA, his wife, </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diane, lobbied </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on behalf of several disaster-relief companies... Four years earlier in Texas, Diane’s lobbying sparked a scandal when she got $250,000 in contracts just months after her husband became the Governor Bush’s Chief of Staff. This time, the year before 911, Diane’s lobbying for disaster relief companies went unnoticed.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">=</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As natural gas prices continue to skyrocket nationwide, the power situation in California is dire. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected due in part to voter frustration with the way governor </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray Davis</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> handled the energy crisis, has not fixed the situation.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">California’s electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001, resulted in rolling blackouts, and forced the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market nearly 10 years ago. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $70 billion, according to some estimates.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For three years, California officials pleaded with federal regulators, President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney to provide the state with some relief from soaring wholesale power prices and investigate energy companies for allegedly manipulating the market. Bush and Cheney responded personally to Gray Davis’s pleas for help in May 2001 by saying the crisis was the result of California’s incomplete deregulation.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">It wasn’t until Enron collapsed in October 2001 and evidence of the company’s manipulative trading tactics emerged</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that FERC began to take a look at the company’s role in California’s electricity crisis. Since then, memos written by former Enron traders were uncovered, with colorful names like “Fat Boy” and “Death Star,” that contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enron’s top trader on the West Coast, Timothy Belden, the mastermind behind the scheme, pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">California had demanded $8.9 billion from energy companies for overcharging the state for electricity during the crisis. An administrative law judge for the agency released a preliminary decision in December that says California is due no more than $1.2 billion in refunds, since the state owes the companies $1.8 billion in unpaid bills.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shutting down power plants in California to boost wholesale prices is not a new issue. In 2002, CBS News reported that Williams Companies engaged in identical behavior around the same time as Reliant. The evidence, also a transcript of a recorded conversation between a Williams trader and a power plant operator in California, showed the two conspiring to shut down a power plant for two weeks to boost electricity prices and Williams’s profits. FERC kept the evidence under wraps for a year and cut a secret deal with Williams to refund California $8 million &nbsp;without admitting guilt.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FERC released the transcripts in late November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain a full copy of its report. Had the evidence been released before Enron collapsed, it might have helped California’s case. But it would have hurt Bush’s National Energy Policy, made public the month Williams and FERC hatched a settlement. Bush visited California and told Davis he could not do anything to help the state.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Memos written by former Enron traders contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On May 17, a few weeks before the meeting between Bush and Davis, Vice President Dick Cheney, who chairs Bush’s energy task force, was interviewed by PBS’s“Frontline” for a special series on California’s energy crisis. During the interview, Cheney flat-out denied that energy companies ripped off California.[WHAT DID HE KNOW?]</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things – an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn’t really deregulate,” Cheney said.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When asked whether it was possible that energy companies were behaving like a “cartel” and if some of the high power prices in California could be the result of manipulation, Cheney responded with a resounding “no.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Bush administration’s critics have said it’s highly unlikely that the president, Cheney, and members of his energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams and Reliant scams, especially since the findings of the investigation by FERC took place around the same time the policy was being drafted. According to evidence obtained by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA.), the energy task force “considered and abandoned plans to address California’s energy problems in its report.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reliant</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has also been connected to Cheney’s energy task force, which met between January and March 2001 to work on Bush’s National Energy Policy.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reliant, along with Entergy and TXU, two other electricity corporations based in Texas, hired Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. Allbaugh is the wife of </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Joe Allbaugh, a trusted Bush cohort who had served on Cheney’s energy task force</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and a director of the Federal Energy Management Agency.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reliant, TXU, and Entergy each paid Diane Allbaugh $20,000 for consulting work during the last three months of 2000. It’s unclear whether she lobbied the energy task force on behalf of Reliant, TXU, and Entergy, which would have certainly been a conflict of interest, but her husband, Joe Allbaugh, “has participated in task force talks with a direct bearing on the energy companies’ interests generally, such as environmental rules for power plants and electricity deregulation – a specialty of his wife’s,” the Los Angeles Times reported.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">The energy bill signed by Bush in August was a boon to Reliant Energy. House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton has for years pushed for legislation to create more competitive electricity markets. Reliant, whose executives enjoy close a relationship with Barton, played a role in shaping the energy bill, and worked side by side with Barton for years in shaping a portion of the energy bill that deals with competitive power markets.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barton’s staff includes two former Reliant executives, and until recently, Reliant’s lobbying team included two former Barton aides. Reliant employees contributed more than $35,000 to Barton’s political causes between 2001 and 2004. Barton holds about $15,000 in Reliant stock, which has increased nearly tenfold since he bought the shares in 2002.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Leopold is the author of News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit his Web site at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.</span></p>


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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">JOE ALLBAUGH</span></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">end ggle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 corpwatch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="text" style="line-height: 14px;"><tbody><tr><td><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="newstitle" style="line-height: 18px; font-weight: bold;">US: Former Bush Adviser 'Consulting' for Halliburton's Iraq Contractor</span>

<span class="newssubtitle" style="font-weight: bold;">Joe Allbaugh, the Oklahoman known for his flat-top haircut and loyalty to President Bush, has a new client: Halliburton, the Houston-based company once led by Vice President Cheney. Allbaugh's wife and partner at the Allbaugh Company, Diane Allbaugh, is also listed on the registration, which was filed last week with the Senate Office of Public Records.</span>

<span class="author" style="line-height: 13px;">by&nbsp;Michael S. Gerber</span>,&nbsp;<span class="author" style="line-height: 13px;"><a href="http://www.dcexaminer.com/" style="text-decoration: none;">The Washington Examiner</a></span>
<span class="date" style="line-height: 13px;">March 22nd, 2005</span>
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</font><p class="text" /><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh, the Oklahoman known for his flat-top haircut and loyalty to President Bush, has a new client: Halliburton, the Houston-based company once led by Vice President Cheney.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, a close adviser to Bush during his Texas days, registered to lobby on behalf of Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary. Allbaugh's wife and partner at the Allbaugh Company, Diane Allbaugh, is also listed on the registration, which was filed last week with the Senate Office of Public Records.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement, a spokeswoman for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/halliburton" style="text-decoration: none;">Halliburton</a>&nbsp;said Allbaugh had not been commissioned to do any direct lobbying.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"KBR hired Joe Allbaugh as a consultant to provide strategy support for our Government and Infrastructure business," the statement read. "Mr. Allbaugh has not been tasked with any lobbying responsibilities."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Allbaugh's lobbying disclosure form says the company will "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesperson for the Allbaugh Co. said Allbaugh was traveling on vacation. The spokesperson said the firm was tapped to advise&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/kbr" style="text-decoration: none;">KBR</a>&nbsp;solely on homeland security issues.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh's close ties to the White House give him contacts throughout the administration, Congress and the private sector. As director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the first two years of the Bush administration, Allbaugh was charged with overseeing the federal government's disaster preparedness and relief programs.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to joining FEMA, Allbaugh was one of Bush's closest campaign aides. He managed Bush's first run for the Texas governor's mansion in 1994 and later served as Bush's chief of staff in Austin. During the 2000 election, Allbaugh, a former deputy secretary of transportation in Oklahoma and longtime GOP campaign operative, was the national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney campaign. Allbaugh, along with Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, was part of the triumvirate of Bush's closest advisers.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh left FEMA in March 2003 when the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security and he was passed over as secretary in favor of Tom Ridge, but he continued to serve on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Currently, he is a partner in two lobbying firms and chairman of New Bridge Strategies, a company set up by lobbyists with close ties to the Bush administration. New Bridge helps clients "evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq," according to its Web site.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is a perfect example of someone cashing in on a cozy political relationship," said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. "Allbaugh's former placement as a senior government official and<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> his new lobbying position with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/kbr" style="text-decoration: none;">KBR</a>&nbsp;strengthens the company's already tight ties to the administration, </span>and I hope that contractor accountability is not lost as a result."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The White House did not return a request for comment on this story.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Halliburton and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/kbr" style="text-decoration: none;">KBR</a>&nbsp;have played a major role in the reconstruction of Iraq since the American invasion two years ago. The companies came under fire after receiving many government contracts in Iraq, including a no-bid contract to put out oil fires that was worth several billion dollars.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Halliburton, where Cheney was CEO from 1995 until August 2000, has an in-house government affairs shop led by retired Army Gen. Charles Dominy. In 2004, the company reported $400,000 in lobbying expenditures.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the last few years,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/kbr" style="text-decoration: none;">KBR</a>&nbsp;has hired a small number of outside consultants, including lobbyists from Covington & Burling and Leo Wright Associates, according to disclosure filings. The contractor also paid Michael Barrett, a former counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to help steer the company through congressional investigations into Iraq contracts.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/halliburton" style="text-decoration: none;">Halliburton</a>&nbsp;spokeswoman declined to say how much the company is paying Allbaugh, citing company policy not to reveal the value of contracts with outside consultants.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh<b> dir Fed Energy Reg Comiss </b>(tx "iron triangle) wife lobby for reliant, entergy and txu);</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1994, Allbaugh was brought to Texas by George W. Bush to <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">manage his campaign</span> for governor. VS ROVE? After Bush's victory, Allbaugh worked as gubernatorial chief of staff, serving until 1999 when he shifted posts to become campaign manager in Bush's run for the presidency. In this capacity Allbaugh was a key member of a tight circle of aides, together with <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Karl Rove and Karen Hughes,</span> that the media dubbed the "Iron Triangle". Allbaugh called the trio "the brain, the brawn and the bite", with himself as the brawn at 6 feet 4 inches and 275 pounds.[2
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2000 Allbaugh became the Bush-Cheney national campaign director.<b> Cheney and Allbaugh reportedly grew so close</b> that, after the election, Cheney sold his opulent Washington townhouse to Allbaugh, for just $690,000. That same year, Bush appointed Allbaugh director of FEMA. During his tenure, Allbaugh slashed the professional staff, and turned over much of FEMA’s work to private contractors</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The year before Allbaugh took over FEMA, his wife, <b>Diane</b>, lobbied on behalf of several disaster-relief companies.</span>. Four years earlier in Texas,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Diane’s lobbying sparked a scandal when she got $250,000 in contracts just months after her husband became the Governor Bush’s Chief of Staff.</span> This time, the year before 911, Diane’s lobbying for disaster relief companies went unnoticed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Allbaugh stepped down from FEMA in ‘03, he installed former neighbor Michael Brown, (“Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job”) as Director. Allbough had hired Brown as FEMA general counsel in ’01.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DIANE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bankrupt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Oklahoma, Allbaugh was perhaps best known for his fearlessness in pursuing deals that raised grave conflict-of-interest questions. In 1987, he was again working for Henry Bellmon, now governor of Oklahoma, as a top aide who interacted with highway officials. In December of that year, court records show, Allbaugh took a $30,000 bank loan guaranteed by a large road contractor who was engaged in a steady stream of disputes with the state over shoddy work practices. Allbaugh never repaid the loan and in 1990 the court ordered that his wages be garnished.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Neal McCaleb, the man who ran Oklahoma’s Transportation Department at the time,</span> would later be appointed by President George W. Bush as U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. (Shortly thereafter, Allbaugh’s wife would be accused by a McCaleb subordinate of improperly lobbying McCaleb, a Chickasaw Indian, on behalf of client tribes seeking beneficial gaming decisions.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From there, the stakes got higher. In 1988, Allbaugh left government to take a job with Stephens Inc., an investment-banking firm run by an old Bellmon friend. When Allbaugh arrived, Jack Stephens was busy currying favor with Vice President George H.W. Bush, then likely to be elected president. He gave $100,000, the legal maximum, to Bush’s campaign and helped bail out the vice-president’s son, George W. Bush: it was <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stephens who helped arrange for a Saudi oil magnate to buy an ownership stake in Harken Energy, W.’s oil company, which was struggling to stay afloat.</span></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">brownie:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After passing the Oklahoma bar in 1982, Brown moved to the oil boomtown of Enid, where he was hired by the law firm of <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stephen Jones, a flamboyant attorney who went on to defend Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.</span> There, according to his other sister-in-law, Brown bobbled a wrongful-death suit for a woman whose husband’s car was hit by a train when crossing signals failed to work. When the firm busted up, literally, after a fistfight that left Jones sporting a shiner on the front page of the local paper, the partners divvied up the staff. Thirty-four staffers found immediate work. Brown was one of two staffers no one wanted. “When I saw Brown up there at FEMA, I had a premonition of bad things to come,” recalls Jones....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">joe:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...George W.’s father had an eye for problems that might sneak up on his kids-and for identifying people who could help make the problems go away. ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His loyalty to Bush, a man who prizes that quality above all others in his subordinates, was unquestioned. “There isn’t anything more important than protecting him and the first lady,” Allbaugh once told the Washington Post from the governor’s office. “I’m the heavy, in the literal sense of the word.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ironically, the other heavy was a small, refined woman by the name of Harriet Miers, hired, as was Allbaugh, by the tough Dallas lawyer Jim Francis, then Bush’s campaign chairman and a longtime friend of Bush’s father. As general counsel, Miers was in charge of fending off legal problems that threatened Bush with adverse publicity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1999, Allbaugh left the governor’s office to take over the daily management of Bush’s presidential campaign. He headed up a staff of 180, controlled spending, and spoke with Bush several times a day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One potential problem facing the campaign was the rumor that Bush’s father had pulled strings to get his candidate son out of Vietnam service and into a safe <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Texas Air National Guard </span>unit in 1968. There were even reports that Bush went AWOL long before his compulsory flying days were up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The key players in keeping the lid on the National Guard story were Allbaugh and Miers. In 2004, a year before Bush nominated Miers for the Supreme Court, Allbaugh told The New York Times, “She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played.” Assigned to “investigate” Bush’s Guard service, Miers gave the governor a clean bill of health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As part of his job, Allbaugh communicated directly with Adjutant General Daniel James III, the head of the Texas National Guard (later appointed by President George W. Bush to run the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">federal Air National Guard)</span>. What remains unclear is whether he ordered James to dispose of any old Bush military files that might prove embarrassing, an order former Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, head of a Guard efficiency task force, claims to have heard Allbaugh issue in a conversation on James’s speakerphone. Whatever was or was not done, the unexplained gaps in Bush’s National Guard service never became a central topic in the 2000 election. With his “iron triangle” of Rove on strategy, Hughes on P.R., and Allbaugh as the enforcer (plus an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court), Bush triumphed.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CASHING IN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If being ostensibly “anti-government” while playing a leading role in government is tricky, it all pays off on the back end. Nobody knows that better than Allbaugh, whom Newsweek recently described as having “the hide of a rhino” when it comes to criticism of conflicts of interest. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Once he left FEMA, he moved quickly to make up for years of privation in the public sector, forming the Allbaugh Company with his wife, Diane, an attorney.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diane Allbaugh had begun laying the groundwork from the moment they arrived in Washington, D.C., repeating a pattern she’d established in Texas. In the summer of 1996, just a year after moving to the Lone Star State, Diane had signed on as a lobbyist with a number of large corporate clients, mostly energy firms, with pressing business before the state, while her husband held a highly visible position as the governor’s top aide. When the newspapers reported the story, Governor Bush’s office hastened to announce new rules, and Diane declared an end to her lobbying career. However, she was soon ensconced in a ‘non-lobbying’ position with a law firm representing some of the same companies. Now, in Washington, she jumped into the K Street fray, becoming “of counsel” to Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which Fortune magazine described at the time as the country’s most powerful lobbying firm.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The shop’s founder, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Haley Barbour, who would figure prominently in the Allbaughs’ improving financial prospects, was the very definition of a self-dealer. After founding the firm, he stayed involved with it while playing a key role in the privatization of government services as chairman of the Republican National Committee during Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” revolution, then served as chairman of Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign advisory committee. </span>He left the company in 2003 to mount a successful run for governor of Mississippi-where he ended up on television talking about how his citizens were suffering from Katrina. No one thought to point out how the Allbaugh-Brown-Barbour model of disaster management had set the stage for the calamity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cynic (or a realist) might formulate that model like this<b>: Why spend resources to prevent disasters, when there’s so much money to be made cleaning up after them?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider the trajectory o<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">f Shaw Group, a Baton Rouge engineering and construction firm, and one of Allbaugh’s biggest clients.</span> On August 15, 2005, with hurricane season getting under way, Joe and Diane’s firm, Allbaugh Co., registered as a lobbyist for Shaw, which began advertising for workers to man its rebuilding projects before Katrina even struck. After the levees broke, Shaw, which had not been a FEMA contractor during the Clinton years, received two separate $100 million federal clean-up contracts and saw its stock price shoot up 50 percent in a few weeks. (After Brown departed FEMA, the agency announced that it would re-bid some contracts that were given on a non-competitive basis, including Shaw’s.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless, when the D.C. newspaper The Hill asked about the remarkable good fortune of Allbaugh’s clients, his spokesperson, Patti Giglio, replied, “The first thing he says when he sits down with a client is, ‘Don’t hire me if you’re looking for a government contract.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maybe that’s why AshBritt Inc., didn’t hire Allbaugh. Instead, the Florida-based environmental services firm hired Barbour Griffith-and was selected by the Army Corps of Engineers to help lead the Katrina clean-up effort. The contract, worth $568 million, was signed before the hurricane hit. Interestingly, back in 2002, when an ice storm hit Allbaugh’s native Kay County, Oklahoma, Allbaugh arranged a conference call with county officials, who ended up choosing the Florida-based AshBritt over other firms with much lower competing bids. (AshBritt has been much in the news in recent weeks, with a plethora of pointed local articles raising questions about the company’s operations, its candor, and its spectacular growth during the Bush years – all through its lucrative contracts to subcontract to other firms that do most of the actual clean-up work.)</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh’s web of self-interest ranges from disasters to energy to real estate. And the self-serving links involve not just him, his wife, Brown, and Barbour but also the vice president and the president. Haley Barbour advised the Bush-Cheney campaign on strategy in 2000 while Joe Allbaugh was campaign manager. During the transition, Allbaugh vetted Cheney’s qualifications to be vice president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the election, Allbaugh served on Cheney’s secretive energy task force while his wife was “of counsel” at the Barbour firm and being paid as a “consultant” by Reliant Energy, Entergy, and Texas Utilities Co. Diane Allbaugh says she did no lobbying. But Barbour, on behalf of an electricity-producing client, successfully pushed Cheney’s task force to recommend that the new administration renege on a campaign promise to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Bush, citing the task-force findings, complied.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Allbaughs and Cheneys are literally so at home with each other that, on first arriving in Washington in 2001, the Allbaughs bought Cheney’s townhouse in McLean, Virginia, for $690,000. During the house tour, Cheney must have pointed out the revolving doors. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of Allbaugh’s biggest clients is Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, whose Kellogg, Brown and Root subsidiary got at least $61 million worth of Katrina business.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Allbaugh left FEMA he did not, however, restrict himself to the domestic disaster business. Instead, he cast a wider net into the entire<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Homeland Security/Defense sector, </span>thereby <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">stressing his implied connections in the Department of Homeland Security, which had absorbed FEMA, and in the Pentagon and White House. His departure from government, in March, 2003, took place precisely as the invasion of Iraq unfolded.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh formed, with Barbour Griffith and numerous ex-officials of the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, a company called New Bridge Strategies.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> It moved to secure contracts in Iraq the moment hostilities commenced.</span> He also formed Blackwell-Fairbanks, a joint venture with Andrew Lundquist, with whom he had served on vice president Cheney’s secretive energy task force.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Allbaugh has been married twice. His current wife of almost 15 years, Diane, is an Austin lawyer.</span>&nbsp;[1st wife Gypsy ogan, suspecious of meny in odd co, angry when quetioned, claimedto be CIA] They have three children: one from his previous marriage, one from hers and one together. He likes to ski and go fly-fishing. But his planned Alaska vacation last month gave way to the responsibilities of launching the Bush campaign. He managed to grab a few days at Yellowstone National Park around the Fourth of July.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh counts himself lucky to be where he is, knowing he has come a long way from the farm in Oklahoma. "This is the chance of a lifetime," he said. On Jan. 20, 2001, "George Bush will be inaugurated president of the United States and I'll have had a small role in it. It's almost unimaginable."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fbi raid River Birch ladnfill post katrina?...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lobbying Activity |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, shortly after Allbaugh became FEMA director, FEMA awarded a large emergency water supply contract to Lipsey Mountain Water. The move was unusual because Lipsey had no production capacity and only 15 employees—they had to purchase their water directly from Nestle Waters North America, the former holder of the contract. The Lipsey family is also is also one of the<b> nation’s largest gun wholesalers</b>. Like Allbaugh International Group, Lipsey’s Inc. is an NRA corporate donor.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh had also become a partner of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (former head of the GOP) in an interlocking group of firms headed by Bush White House alumni, cadre and family.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, Allbaugh and Barbour opened a lobbying firm called <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">New Bridge Strategies, funded by the BGR group,</span> named for &nbsp;Barbour and former President HW Bush assistants Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rodgers. BGR had also delivered many $100s of millions in Katrina contracts for its clients, including $568 million for Florida firm Ash-Britt, one of Jeb Bush’s big fans.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh is Board Chairman of New Bridge Strategies. Its CEO is Jamal Daniel, a longtime benefactor of President Bush’s oft-scandalized brother Neil. Neil himself is listed as a Consultant to New Bridge Strategies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jamal Daniel, whose father was a founder of the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Syrian Baath Party,</span> also co-chairs other companies with brother Neil, including Crest Investments, Ignite and Silvermat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies’s website trumpets is ability to secure contracts in Iraq.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm is also a principal shareholder in <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">military contractor Diligence</span> LLC, with Allbough as its Deputy Chairman. Diligence’s mideast subsidiary is owned by Mohammed Al-Sagar, chairman of the Kuwait Parliament’s foreign relations committee.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diligence, much like Blackwater, provides security for corporate executives and companies in Iraq. Even more so than Blackwater, Diligenc’s Board and officers are comprised of former CIA and State Dept officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies and Diligence share staff and office space in the Barbour Griffith & Rodgers’ offices.&nbsp;</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies and Diligence share staff and office space in the Barbour Griffith & Rodgers’ offices.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2004, Allbaugh teamed up with<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Andrew Lundquist, former director of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force</span> and a Republican staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to form a third group called Blackwell Fairbanks. The firm’s first client was <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lockheed Martin.</span></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As natural gas prices continue to skyrocket nationwide, the power situation in California is dire.</span> Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected due in part to voter frustration with the way <b>governor Gray Davis</b> handled the energy crisis, has not fixed the situation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California’s electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001, resulted in rolling blackouts, and forced the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market nearly 10 years ago. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $70 billion, according to some estimates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For three years, California officials pleaded with federal regulators, President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney to provide the state with some relief from soaring wholesale power prices and investigate energy companies for allegedly manipulating the market. Bush and Cheney responded personally to Gray Davis’s pleas for help in May 2001 by saying the crisis was the result of California’s incomplete deregulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wasn’t until Enron collapsed in October 2001 and evidence of the company’s manipulative trading tactics emerged that FERC began to take a look at the company’s role in California’s electricity crisis. Since then, memos written by former Enron traders were uncovered, with colorful names like “Fat Boy” and “Death Star,” that contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enron’s top trader on the West Coast, Timothy Belden, the mastermind behind the scheme, pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California had demanded $8.9 billion from energy companies for overcharging the state for electricity during the crisis. An administrative law judge for the agency released a preliminary decision in December that says California is due no more than $1.2 billion in refunds, since the state owes the companies $1.8 billion in unpaid bills.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shutting down power plants in California to boost wholesale prices is not a new issue. In 2002, CBS News reported that Williams Companies engaged in identical behavior around the same time as Reliant. The evidence, also a transcript of a recorded conversation between a Williams trader and a power plant operator in California, showed the two conspiring to shut down a power plant for two weeks to boost electricity prices and Williams’s profits. FERC kept the evidence under wraps for a year and cut a secret deal with Williams to refund California $8 million &nbsp;without admitting guilt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">FERC released the transcripts in late November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain a full copy of its report</span>. Had the evidence been released before Enron collapsed, it might have helped California’s case. But it would have hurt Bush’s National Energy Policy, made public the month Williams and FERC hatched a settlement. Bush visited California and told Davis he could not do anything to help the state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Memos written by former Enron traders contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 17, a few weeks before the meeting between Bush and Davis, Vice President Dick Cheney, who chairs Bush’s energy task force, was interviewed by PBS’s“Frontline” for a special series on California’s energy crisis. During the interview, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cheney flat-out denied that energy companies ripped off California.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things – an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn’t really deregulate,” Cheney said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked whether it was possible that energy companies were behaving like a “cartel” and if some of the high power prices in California could be the result of manipulation, Cheney responded with a resounding “no.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bush administration’s critics have said it’s highly unlikely that the president, Cheney, and members of his energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams and Reliant scams, especially since the findings of the investigation by FERC took place around the same time the policy was being drafted. According to evidence obtained by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA.), the energy task force “considered and abandoned plans to address California’s energy problems in its report.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant has also been connected to Cheney’s energy task force, which met between January and March 2001 to work on Bush’s National Energy Policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant, along with Entergy and TXU, two other electricity corporations based in Texas, hired Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. Allbaugh is the wife of <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Joe Allbaugh, a trusted Bush cohort who had served on Cheney’s energy task force and a director of the Federal Energy Management Agency.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reliant, TXU, and Entergy each paid Diane Allbaugh $20,000 for consulting work during the last three months of 2000. </span>It’s unclear whether she lobbied the energy task force on behalf of Reliant, TXU, and Entergy, which would have certainly been a conflict of interest, but her husband, Joe Allbaugh, “has participated in task force talks with a direct bearing on the energy companies’ interests generally, such as environmental rules for power plants and electricity deregulation – a specialty of his wife’s,” the Los Angeles Times reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The energy bill signed by Bush in August was a boon to Reliant Energy<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton has for years pushed for legislation to create more competitive electricity markets</span>. Reliant, whose executives enjoy close a relationship with Barton, played a role in shaping the energy bill, and worked side by side with Barton for years in shaping a portion of the energy bill that deals with competitive power markets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Barton’s staff includes two former Reliant executives, and until recently, Reliant’s lobbying team included two former Barton aides</span>. Reliant employees contributed more than $35,000 to Barton’s political causes between 2001 and 2004. Barton holds about $15,000 in Reliant stock, which has increased nearly tenfold since he bought the shares in 2002.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Leopold is the author of News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit his Web site at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s Allbaugh Doing For Halliburton?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY FAIZ SHAKIR ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2005 AT 10:06 AM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The AP reports that Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that came under fire for its reconstruction work in Iraq, “has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities that were battered by Hurricane Katrina.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under fire for mistreatment of whistleblowers and under investigation in Nigeria, France, and the U.S. for allegedly paying kickbacks and performing a variety of other corporate misdeeds, Halliburton’s past performance raises serious concerns about whether they’re the right company to help pull the Gulf Coast out of what may end up being the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The appropriation of hurricane recovery funds also highlights Halliburton’s special interest connections to the White House. On February 1, 2005, The Allbaugh Company, under the name of M. Diane Allbaugh, registered to lobby for Kellogg, Brown & Root. The lobbying registration form lists <b>Joe M. Allbaugh,</b> former 2000 Bush campaign manager and former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as KBR’s official lobbyist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The purpose of the lobbying agreement between Allbaugh and Halliburton was ostensibly to “Educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root.” Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Senate Appropriations staffers warn business lobbyists are maneuvering to tack on special-interest amendments” to the hurricane supplemental spending bill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was Allbaugh one of those maneuvering behind the scenes to get Halliburton a piece of the $10.5 billion pie that Congress recently passed for hurricane disaster relief?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If so, it wouldn’t be the first time Allbaugh used his links to Bush to profit off a disaster recovery. On Sept. 29, 2003, the New York Times reported that Allbaugh had set up a consulting firm, New Bridge Strategies, to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Current Communications GroupCurrent Communications Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeGrab Barrier UsrGrab Barrier Usr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M Diane<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Manhole Barrier Security Systems</span>Manhole Barrier Security Systems</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M Diane<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trade-Winds Environmental & Restoration</span>Windswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeCurrent Communications GroupCurrent Communications Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeTrade-Winds Environmental & RestorationWindswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy Corp<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Entergy </span>Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeBroadwaveUSA IncNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeGrab Barrier UsrGrab Barrier Usr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy CorpEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeBroadwaveUSA IncNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeTrade-Winds Environmental & RestorationWindswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeManhole Barrier Security SystemsManhole Barrier Security Systems</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeTXU CorpTXU Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeTXU CorpTXU Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) NYSE: SAI is a FORTUNE 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company headquartered in the United States with numerous federal, state, and private sector clients. It works extensively with the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Intelligence Community, including the National Security Agency, as well as other U.S. Government civil agencies and selected commercial markets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SAIC Inc<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>$60,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant Energy<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant Energy<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TXU Corp<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lexis-Nexis<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>$0</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most Frequently Disclosed Lobbying Issues</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Radio & TV Broadcasting,Utilities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View all lobbying data for Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">allbaugh715</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">promoted 8/13</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DU</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Sex Scandal That Put Bush in the White House</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How GOP operative Roger Stone destroyed the Reform Party in the 2000 presidential campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Barrett, Jessie Singer - May 18th, 2004 - http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0420,barrett,53586,6.h...&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pat Buchanan ... seized control of ... the Reform Party ... became the party's presidential nominee ... (and) mysteriously disappeared, getting 2.4 million votes less than Ralph Nader, 80,000 less in Florida alone. ... Stone and Buchanan were aides to Nixon and Reagan, and Stone, also a Bush I campaign veteran, was rewarded for his subterranean 2000 efforts with an appointment to the Department of Interior transition team, which he parlayed into a multimillion dollar business as an Indian gaming consultant ....Buchanan's vanishing act—-after Stone cajoled him to run Reform-—left nearly a dozen party leaders contacted by the Voice convinced that he and Stone were conscious agents of doom. ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... "Buchanan hospitality suite" at the Dearborn, Michigan, convention hotel—with soda and hamburgers and occasional champagne—"was paid for by Roger, who, in turn, said he was covering it with Trump's money." .....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone(s) ... sacking of the Reform Party may be his lasting legacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....... http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,barrett,52802,1.h... .....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry.Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The longtime GOP consultant's reward for fomenting the "Brooks Brothers mob" that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000 was an invitation within days of Bush's election to serve on the Department of Interior transition working group—helping, in his own words, to staff its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Stone has since used this unannounced perch to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Just two of the five deals examined by the Voice are projected to pay him at least $8 million, and perhaps as much as $13 million.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time, The Washington Post and The New York Times have published exposés about Bush's BIA, with a February story highlighting $45 million in payments to two GOP lobbyists from four tribes since 2001. But no one has focused on Stone's profiteering, which, unlike the payments to registered lobbyists, is not reported on any public filings. .......</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">.... http://www.indianz.com/News/2004/001456.asp?print=1 ....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Republican operative who helped Neal McCaleb and Aurene Martin get their jobs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs admits to orchestrating the campaign to fire former BIA deputy Wayne Smith.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith was ousted after letters from Phil Bersinger, a former business partner, surfaced in the spring of 2002. In the letters, Bersinger touted his close connections to Smith, who handled land-into-trust, federal recognition and gaming issues for the BIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, Smith was trying to resolve a leadership dispute within a small California tribe. Republican operative Roger Stone worked with one faction of the Buena Vista Rancheria that wants a casino. According to The Village Voice, this faction has a contract to pay Stone a $250,000 retainer plus 7.5 percent of annual gaming revenue from the proposed casino.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Smith refused to overturn a decision favoring Stone's clients, Stone told The Voice that he "faxed the letters to certain members" of the press, leading to stories in Time Magazine and other outlets. The stories suggested Smith was using his position to help Bersinger hire tribal clients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neal McCaleb eventually got rid of Smith&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, Rove, Norton, Barbour, Brulte = Inside Bush's Indian Bureau&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- A labyrinth of lobbyists is manufacturing millions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Barrett, Jennifer Suh - April 27th, 2004 - http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,barrett,53013,1.h...&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Wayne Smith ... the '90s, he'd been chief deputy to California's Republican attorney general ... at 52, he was assistant deputy secretary at Interior, managing the $3.5 billion budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and overseeing the hotly politicized Indian casino industry ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... in his new job—which he got on the recommendation of a colleague from his AG days, Sue Wooldridge, top aide to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Neal McCaleb, who was Smith's immediate boss and ran BIA, put him in charge of gaming ... BIA remained a bureaucratic land where the only chiefs are buttoned-down lobbyists, raking in millions from tribes whose casinos are virtually franchises to print influence-peddling largesse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith was troubled early ... his office was lobbied on behalf of two tribes by Diane Allbaugh, the wife of Joe Allbaugh, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 2000 national campaign manager for Bush. Diane Allbaugh, who worked at a firm headed by former Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour, appeared on behalf of a Louisiana casino developer under contract with the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, a Connecticut tribe then tied to Donald Trump.McCaleb urged Smith to take her calls, explaining that he and Joe Allbaugh were old Oklahoma friends and that Allbaugh had "helped convince the White House" to install him at BIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... lobbyist who concerned Smith more than any other ... he'd been on the transition working group for Interior, staffing the agency. The dark force of Indian gaming, retained as a hidden consultant by tribes and developers across the country, was Roger Stone, a veteran of eight Republican presidential campaigns and star of the Miami/Dade recount shutdown. Scott Reed is often his up-front lobbyist face.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Reed began leaning on Smith in late January 2002. Smith even got a note supporting the Stone faction from the Republican leader of the California state senate, Jim Brulte.Stone had recommended the retention of a consulting firm owned by Brulte's former chief of staff, Tom Ross, and Ross wrote the memo summarizing the Buena Vista case that Brulte enclosed. Later in 2002, Stone would host a fundraiser for Brulte at his 40 Central Park South apartment and take Brulte to visit Stone's longtime client Donald Trump.The Brulte intervention sent a particularly strong message to Smith because he'd attended a 2001 Palm Springs meeting involving Karl Rove and a dozen tribes, where Brulte was introduced as "the administration's main man in California—especially for Indian matters." .</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Jack Abramoff, Gaming Gaming and Scalping the Tribes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How is it that two consumate Republican insiders, both purported specialists in illegal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">funding of campaigns, one a political dirty trickster who stays behind the scenes and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the other a felonious convict linked to the White House political office, each manage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to garner tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes in the gaming rackets? By</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">working both sides at once, of course. And, how is it that one gets convicted and goes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to jail while the other keeps getting paid? Who is scalping whom for how much, who has</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lost their scalp, who still has theirs, and will Donald Trump's hair survive the scandals?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With all the attention to Abramoff defrauding the Tribes, why isn't there more attention on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">who else is involved in all of gaming's political machinations and influence peddling?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who has lucrative contracts to receive a percentage of the gross from Indian casinos, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">how did they obtain it? Where is all that money going? How much ends up in the coffers of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">politicos like Sen. John McCain, and why? Who else is scalping the Tribes?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And how much of the scalping goes to legal and illegal campaign contributions?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Questions to be answered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">big year 07 almost 500K$&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barowka & Bonura Engoneers & Consultants<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$20,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Unknown Business</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$60,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>BP America<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Oil & Gas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Current Communications Group<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$10,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Telephone Utilities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dillard University<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$60,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Education</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ecosphere Technologies<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$20,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Waste Management</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">River Birch Inc<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$160,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Waste Management</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shaw Group<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$40,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>General Contractors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unified Recovery Group<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$100,000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Business Services</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=28397</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Allbaugh Co</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (3)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>President & CEO<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Firm lobbying profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012-2012<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Perry, Rick</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (1)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Campaign Manager<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008-2008<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Rudy Giuliani Presidential Cmte</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (1)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Senior Adviser<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004-2006<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Blackwell Fairbanks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (3)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Partner<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Firm lobbying profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001-2003<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Federal Emergency Management Agency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (21)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Director<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Agency lobbying profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1999-2000<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Bush/Cheney 2000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (26)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Campaign Manager<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1996-1999<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Office of the Governor of Texas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (8)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chief of Staff to Governor George W Bush<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Diligence-Iraq</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (1)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Founder<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ecosphere Systems Inc</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (1)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>President & Director<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>National Rifle Assn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (25)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Member, Board of Directors<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Client lobbying profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Major Donor profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>New Bridge Strategies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revolving Door Personnel: (3)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chairman & Director</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brownie incompetence opened door for BW and mercs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BW bk:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">joe gave bremer award</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9/05 started at BW (katrina)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">katrina 900rpm; deputized by gov (badges)DHS contract; got coast g call sign, claimed to rescue 150 ppl (₎; protected banks and rich ppl; in 3 wk 400K to protect morque; 3 mos 33 m$ 326 06 73M, 240K/day 327</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">B2 repealed 1931 bacon act so did not have to pay previaling wage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">; KBR (halli #1 $ iraq)30m$ assess infra and support recovery; shaw gp $700m katrina (135 m irq); both co had Joe Allbaugh lobbying; B-Cheney camp mgr and ex head FEMA 327</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">950 m shaw</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1.4b fluor (alan B also ran iraq recon, sowing down so shifted to La)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">merc la; dyncorp, wac, am sec gp, kroll, Instinctive Shooting Intel (israel)[helo'd in to proetect gated commun], 235 co's and up; f patrick quinn iii guard 3m house, his hotels considered to house fema workers 328</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">$575M Bechtel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dhs IG said need sec 2-5 yrs 330; BW best value</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aug 06 BW guard library (Walmart a fema outpost too) used by fema, parteon denied entry, not told why, denied name of guard or his sup; BW hq in swaggart bible college</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BW sets us new domestic disaster div 332</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wife:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, Rove, Norton, Barbour, Brulte = Inside Bush's Indian Bureau - A labyrinth of lobbyists is manufacturing millions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Barrett, Jennifer Suh - April 27th, 2004 - http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,barrett,53013,1.h...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Wayne Smith ... the '90s, he'd been chief deputy to California's Republican attorney general ... at 52, he was assistant deputy secretary at Interior, managing the $3.5 billion budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and overseeing the hotly politicized Indian casino industry ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... in his new job—which he got on the recommendation of a colleague from his AG days, Sue Wooldridge, top aide to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Neal McCaleb, who was Smith's immediate boss and ran BIA, put him in charge of gaming ... BIA remained a bureaucratic land where the only chiefs are buttoned-down lobbyists, raking in millions from tribes whose casinos are virtually franchises to print influence-peddling largesse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith was troubled early ... his office was lobbied on behalf of two tribes by Diane Allbaugh, the wife of Joe Allbaugh, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 2000 national campaign manager for Bush. Diane Allbaugh, who worked at a firm headed by former Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour, appeared on behalf of a Louisiana casino developer under contract with the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, a Connecticut tribe then tied to Donald Trump. McCaleb urged Smith to take her calls, explaining that he and Joe Allbaugh were old Oklahoma friends and that Allbaugh had "helped convince the White House" to install him at BIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... lobbyist who concerned Smith more than any other ... he'd been on the transition working group for Interior, staffing the agency. The dark force of Indian gaming, retained as a hidden consultant by tribes and developers across the country, was Roger Stone, a veteran of eight Republican presidential campaigns and star of the Miami/Dade recount shutdown. Scott Reed is often his up-front lobbyist face.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Reed began leaning on Smith in late January 2002. Smith even got a note supporting the Stone faction from the Republican leader of the California state senate, Jim Brulte. Stone had recommended the retention of a consulting firm owned by Brulte's former chief of staff, Tom Ross, and Ross wrote the memo summarizing the Buena Vista case that Brulte enclosed. Later in 2002, Stone would host a fundraiser for Brulte at his 40 Central Park South apartment and take Brulte to visit Stone's longtime client Donald Trump. The Brulte intervention sent a particularly strong message to Smith because he'd attended a 2001 Palm Springs meeting involving Karl Rove and a dozen tribes, where Brulte was introduced as "the administration's main man in California—especially for Indian matters." .</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">balz wapo:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh: Big Man on Campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first thing you notice about Joe Allbaugh is how much of him you notice. He stands 6 feet 4 inches, weighs 275 pounds and wears his hair in a brush. "It's a flat-top," he insists, "not a crew cut."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is a rare display of vanity for the notoriously press-shy Allbaugh. At meetings of the National Governors' Association, he is sometimes mistaken for one of the ubiquitous security officers and seems to prefer it that way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until last month, Allbaugh was Bush's gubernatorial chief of staff. He is the behind-the-scenes man and the calming force between two strong-willed and powerful personalities in strategist Karl Rove and communications director Karen Hughes. His main role, he often jokes, was that of "the enforcer of the governor's will and the moderator of staff egos."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Joe listens," Hughes says. "Both Karl and I talk a lot. Joe does not. He's quiet. But when he speaks, it's always well thought out. Joe's very fair and very balanced. He gets things done."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh has prospered in part because he has a constituency of one – Bush. "There isn't anything more important than protecting him and the first lady," he said. "I'm the heavy, in the literal sense of the word."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, it was not preordained that he would become Bush's campaign manager. Bush considered giving the job to former Iowa representative Tom Tauke. There are several versions of what happened: One is that Bush didn't want to force Tauke to give up a lucrative salary in Washington and move to Austin. Another is that Tauke worried that he could never fully control the campaign, particularly given Rove's power and long relationship with Bush. Still another is that Tauke proposed a top-down campaign structure that would have limited staff access to the candidate and with which Bush was not comfortable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The outcome was a decision to make Allbaugh the campaign manager and leave Rove in the role of chief strategist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh is a nuts-and-bolts manager who enjoys saying no. "Joe is a really good bad cop," says Mark McKinnon, Bush's chief media adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McKinnon recalls asking Allbaugh to inspect the new, Spartan offices the media team has established in Austin, which have no running water and the ambiance of a fallout shelter. "His response was, 'How much were those fancy chairs?' " McKinnon says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Bush's fund-raising team, led by Midland business executive Donald Evans, piled up a rec ord $36.3 million in contributions in the first half of the year, Allbaugh kept a tight lid on expenditures, deferring the hiring of staff and denying some requests for travel. Of late he has taken to walking around the campaign headquarters with a megaphone, admonishing the staff not to spend money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's not what you raise, it's what you have in the bank," he explains. "So what if you raise it all if you don't have it when you need it. So yes, I'm pretty frugal."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, 46, was raised on a farm about 100 miles north of Oklahoma City. His family abruptly moved to town the day his mother found a rattlesnake in a dresser drawer. "She found it in the morning and we became city farmers overnight," he says. Despite his size he never played football beyond junior high school. "By the time I got to high school, not only was I burned out, I was severely hurt," he says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He studied political science at Oklahoma State University, becoming the first male in his family to graduate from college, and thought about law school. Instead, he was bitten by the campaign bug and started to do volunteer work. "It was enjoyable and it kept me off the farm," he says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His first campaign was an Oklahoma congressional race in 1968. He did a gubernatorial campaign in 1970, worked on a Senate campaign in 1972 and in 1974 got his first paid campaign job as a driver and aide-de-camp for Republican Henry Bellmon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He worked on the political field staff in the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984, but "was burned out of the traveling" by the time it ended and moved back to Oklahoma City. In 1986, he helped Bellmon win election as governor and spent 18 months in the governor's office, where he first met George W. Bush. "I was the Karl Rove of Bellmon's operation," he says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Early in 1994 Allbaugh got a call from Bush, who had been referred to him by a mutual friend. Bush was concerned that his gubernatorial campaign was not operating smoothly, and he was looking for someone strong enough to make decisions stick. "Fortunately," Allbaugh says, "that's one of my strengths."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh has been married twice. His current wife of almost 15 years, Diane, is an Austin lawyer. They have three children: one from his previous marriage, one from hers and one together. He likes to ski and go fly-fishing. But his planned Alaska vacation last month gave way to the responsibilities of launching the Bush campaign. He managed to grab a few days at Yellowstone National Park around the Fourth of July.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh counts himself lucky to be where he is, knowing he has come a long way from the farm in Oklahoma. "This is the chance of a lifetime," he said. On Jan. 20, 2001, "George Bush will be inaugurated president of the United States and I'll have had a small role in it. It's almost unimaginable."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As natural gas prices continue to skyrocket nationwide, the power situation in California is dire. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected due in part to voter frustration with the way governor Gray Davis handled the energy crisis, has not fixed the situation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California’s electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001, resulted in rolling blackouts, and forced the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market nearly 10 years ago. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $70 billion, according to some estimates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For three years, California officials pleaded with federal regulators, President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney to provide the state with some relief from soaring wholesale power prices and investigate energy companies for allegedly manipulating the market. Bush and Cheney responded personally to Gray Davis’s pleas for help in May 2001 by saying the crisis was the result of California’s incomplete deregulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wasn’t until Enron collapsed in October 2001 and evidence of the company’s manipulative trading tactics emerged that FERC began to take a look at the company’s role in California’s electricity crisis. Since then, memos written by former Enron traders were uncovered, with colorful names like “Fat Boy” and “Death Star,” that contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enron’s top trader on the West Coast, Timothy Belden, the mastermind behind the scheme, pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California had demanded $8.9 billion from energy companies for overcharging the state for electricity during the crisis. An administrative law judge for the agency released a preliminary decision in December that says California is due no more than $1.2 billion in refunds, since the state owes the companies $1.8 billion in unpaid bills.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shutting down power plants in California to boost wholesale prices is not a new issue. In 2002, CBS News reported that Williams Companies engaged in identical behavior around the same time as Reliant. The evidence, also a transcript of a recorded conversation between a Williams trader and a power plant operator in California, showed the two conspiring to shut down a power plant for two weeks to boost electricity prices and Williams’s profits. FERC kept the evidence under wraps for a year and cut a secret deal with Williams to refund California $8 million &nbsp;without admitting guilt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FERC released the transcripts in late November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain a full copy of its report. Had the evidence been released before Enron collapsed, it might have helped California’s case. But it would have hurt Bush’s National Energy Policy, made public the month Williams and FERC hatched a settlement. Bush visited California and told Davis he could not do anything to help the state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Memos written by former Enron traders contained the blueprint for ripping off California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 17, a few weeks before the meeting between Bush and Davis, Vice President Dick Cheney, who chairs Bush’s energy task force, was interviewed by PBS’s“Frontline” for a special series on California’s energy crisis. During the interview, Cheney flat-out denied that energy companies ripped off California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things – an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn’t really deregulate,” Cheney said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked whether it was possible that energy companies were behaving like a “cartel” and if some of the high power prices in California could be the result of manipulation, Cheney responded with a resounding “no.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bush administration’s critics have said it’s highly unlikely that the president, Cheney, and members of his energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams and Reliant scams, especially since the findings of the investigation by FERC took place around the same time the policy was being drafted. According to evidence obtained by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA.), the energy task force “considered and abandoned plans to address California’s energy problems in its report.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant has also been connected to Cheney’s energy task force, which met between January and March 2001 to work on Bush’s National Energy Policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant, along with Entergy and TXU, two other electricity corporations based in Texas, hired Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. Allbaugh is the wife of Joe Allbaugh, a trusted Bush cohort who had served on Cheney’s energy task force and a director of the Federal Energy Management Agency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant, TXU, and Entergy each paid Diane Allbaugh $20,000 for consulting work during the last three months of 2000. It’s unclear whether she lobbied the energy task force on behalf of Reliant, TXU, and Entergy, which would have certainly been a conflict of interest, but her husband, Joe Allbaugh, “has participated in task force talks with a direct bearing on the energy companies’ interests generally, such as environmental rules for power plants and electricity deregulation – a specialty of his wife’s,” the Los Angeles Times reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The energy bill signed by Bush in August was a boon to Reliant Energy. House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton has for years pushed for legislation to create more competitive electricity markets. Reliant, whose executives enjoy close a relationship with Barton, played a role in shaping the energy bill, and worked side by side with Barton for years in shaping a portion of the energy bill that deals with competitive power markets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barton’s staff includes two former Reliant executives, and until recently, Reliant’s lobbying team included two former Barton aides. Reliant employees contributed more than $35,000 to Barton’s political causes between 2001 and 2004. Barton holds about $15,000 in Reliant stock, which has increased nearly tenfold since he bought the shares in 2002.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Leopold is the author of News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit his Web site at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DISASTER PROFITEERING:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will They Do for the Gulf Coast What They Did for Iraq?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Funds to rebuild the areas of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana hit by the storm are flowing quickly. Congress has already approved $62 billion for disaster relief, and the total price tag is expected to exceed $100 billion. "They are throwing money out, they are shoveling it out the door," according toWashington lobbyist James Albertine (John M. Broder, "In Storm's Ruins, a Rush to Rebuild and Reopen for Business," Washington Post, September 10, 2005).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Normal contracting rules have been suspended, so the majority - if not all - of the contracts for hurricane relief and rebuilding will be awarded on a no-bid, cost-plus basis. This is a recipe for fiscal disaster. As Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight has said, this process is likely to attract greedy, self-interested companies: "This is very painful. You are likely to see the equivalent of war profiteering - disaster profiteering."&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the politically connected firms that have already received contracts related to Hurricane Katrina cleanup and rebuilding include Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton (to rebuild military facilities affected by the storm and to help repair the breach in the levee); Bechtel, Fluor, CH2MHill, the Shaw Group, and Dewberry Technologies to build or repair housing in the region; and the private military company, BlackwaterAssociates, allegedly to guard local buildings. The majority of these firms have been active in the rebuilding of Iraq, where poor performance, overcharging, and outright fraud have been regular occurrences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lobbyists have also hit the ground running in an effort to help their clients secure contracts. &nbsp;Most prominent among them is Joe Allbaugh, who flew to the region before many FEMA officials made their way there. &nbsp;Among his clients are Halliburton and the Shaw Group, both of which have rebuilding contracts already in hand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh dir F Energy Reg Comiss (tx "iron triangle) wife lobby for reliant, entergy and txu);</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">billions spent on preparedness post911 did not help in kartina (gb praised Fema when running) Allbaugh cronie hired Brownie then left in charge; &nbsp;Allbaugh opened a lobby shop for disaster releif (cf poison trailers, actually Shaw?0 and iraq reconstr ! 142 FEMA absorbed by Homeland, 2/3 brass left for jobs w/ contractors or their lobbyists 143 post katrina no-bid contracts to allbaugh and CH2M Hill Fluor (fdr heritage) and bechtel also Ed Badolato Shaw &nbsp;wreck crew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joe_M.Allbaugh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe M. Allbaugh (born July 27, 1952) is an American political figure in the Republican Party. After spending most of his career in Oklahoma and Texas, Allbaugh came to national prominence working for Texas governor George W. Bush and helping manage his 2000 presidential election campaign. Allbaugh then became a member of Bush's cabinet as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) beginning in February 2001. He served until FEMA's transfer into the newly created Department of Homeland Security, after which he resigned in March 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After leaving FEMA, Allbaugh has participated in numerous private ventures such as New Bridge Strategies, a private company that helps clients get contracts in Iraq.[1] This prompted blogger Billmon to comment, "Heck, it seems like only yesterday that Joe Allbaugh was complaining about how FEMA was nothing more than an 'overgrown entitlement program' for the poor. Of course, that was before Joe became an overgrown entitlement program -- although not exactly for the poor."[2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contents</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[hide]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 Early political involvement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 The George W. Bush campaigns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 Allbaugh at FEMA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Post-FEMA career</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 Hurricane Katrina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6 Allbaugh and Halliburton's KBR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7 Senior Advisor to Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8 Trivia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9 SourceWatch Resources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10 References</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11 External links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Early political involvement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh began working on political campaigns at the age of 12 as a volunteer for Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign.[1] According to the Washington Post, he "studied political science at Oklahoma State University, becoming the first male in his family to graduate from college." Instead of attending law school, "he was bitten by the campaign bug and started to do volunteer work," first during "an Oklahoma congressional race in 1968 ... [then] a gubernatorial campaign in 1970, worked on a Senate campaign in 1972 and in 1974 got his first paid campaign job as a driver and aide-de-camp for Republican Henry Bellmon."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"He worked on the political field staff in the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984, but 'was burned out of the traveling' by the time it ended and moved back to Oklahoma City. In 1986, he helped Bellmon win election as governor and spent 18 months in the governor's office, where he first met George W. Bush. 'I was the Karl Rove of Bellmon's operation,' he says." Early in 1994, Allbaugh joined George W. Bush in his campaign for the White House."[2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh later served as a deputy secretary of transportation under Bellmon's successor, David Walters.[3]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The George W. Bush campaigns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1994, Allbaugh was brought to Texas by George W. Bush to manage his campaign for governor. After Bush's victory, Allbaugh worked as gubernatorial chief of staff, serving until 1999 when he shifted posts to become campaign manager in Bush's run for the presidency. In this capacity Allbaugh was a key member of a tight circle of aides, together with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, that the media dubbed the "Iron Triangle". Allbaugh called the trio "the brain, the brawn and the bite", with himself as the brawn at 6 feet 4 inches and 275 pounds.[2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Bush secured the Republican nomination, he chose Dick Cheney to lead the process of screening and selecting a running mate. Allbaugh ended up with the responsibility of vetting Cheney himself when Bush focused directly on Cheney as his choice for Vice President, rather than as the man to simply help with the choice.[4] The screening process was subsequently called into question when Cheney's Halliburton stock options, along with his sparse voting record in state and local elections, came to light. A Cheney spokeswoman defended Allbaugh's vetting process, saying it "was as thorough, if not more thorough than what other candidates went through." It remained unclear whether Cheney had filled out a questionnaire he had given the other potential running mates, which dealt with these issues among other topics.[5]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the election results turned into a dispute over Florida ballot counts, Allbaugh went to Florida to run the post-election operation there while other advisers remained behind in Texas.[6] After the legal maneuverings played out with Bush prevailing, he named Allbaugh as his nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency on January 4, 2001.[3]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh at FEMA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh was confirmed as Director of FEMA in February 2001 by the Senate in a unanimous vote.[7] He gained some attention that April for remarks questioning whether taxpayers should have to cover the cost of rebuilding properties that suffer repeated flood damage, just as the Mississippi River was flooding.[8] This turned into a public disagreement with the mayor of Davenport, Iowa, one of the affected cities, and brought up policy issues that would arise again under Allbaugh's successor after Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration also proposed cuts to FEMA's budget and the National Flood Insurance Program.[9] After Tropical Storm Allison hit Texas in June, however, Allbaugh said the budget cuts would affect the agency's ability to respond to future disasters.[10]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May, Bush announced that FEMA would expand its responsibility to include government response to terrorist attacks. Allbaugh explained that this mission, dubbed "homeland defense", would focus on dealing with the effects of such attacks, but not extend to gathering intelligence to prevent them.[11] This left the agency as one of the most visible responders in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. At the time of the attacks, Allbaugh was attending a conference in Big Sky, Montana, on the subject of emergency response.[12]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the September 11 attacks, a cabinet reorganization made FEMA part of the newly created Department of Homeland Security. After Allbaugh was passed over as secretary in favor of Tom Ridge, he resigned from FEMA effective March 1, 2003, the date the reorganization was to take effect.[13] He continued to serve, however, on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. His successor at FEMA was Michael Brown, another Oklahoma native and an old friend from Republican state politics. Allbaugh had hired Brown as general counsel, and he went on to become deputy director before taking over the top post at the agency.[14]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Post-FEMA career</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After leaving the government, Allbaugh capitalized on his ties with the Bush administration by going into private business ventures connected with Bush's policy objectives. In September 2003, he became president of New Bridge Strategies,[3][4][5][6] a consulting firm to help clients "evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq." He also became co-chair of Diligence-Iraq, a security company founded by former CIA and FBI chief William Webster and 40 percent owned by a wealthy Kuwaiti politician, which provides protection for companies doing business there.[15][16][17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh also started his own firm, which he merged in 2004 with that of his wife Diane, who had worked as a lobbyist at the Republican firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers during his government service.[18][19] The Washington Post described the Allbaugh Company as "a lobbying-consulting firm with many clients in the disaster-relief business. ... Among those clients are: the KBR division of Haliburton; TruePosition, a manufacturer of wireless location products, services and devices; the Shaw Group, a provider of engineering, design, construction, and maintenance services to government and the private sector; and UltraStrip, which is marketing the first water filtration system approved by the Environmental Protection Agency."[20] The Wall Street Journal compared his work to that of his predecessor at FEMA, James Lee Witt, who also went into the private sector.[21]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On July 12, 2006, Emergent Biosolutions, maker of the Anthrax Vaccine under its former name BioPort, announced that Allbaugh joined the Board of Directors. BioPort had been the subject of an unsatisfactory FDA inspection, a recall, and a warning letter. In September 2006, Allbaugh was elected president of Ecosphere Systems, Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hurricane Katrina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh traveled to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina to help coordinate private-sector support, according to his spokeswoman. His clients were among the first to win federal contracts to help with hurricane recovery: Shaw won a bid potentially worth $100 million to refurbish buildings and provide emergency housing, and KBR received $29.8 million from the Pentagon to rebuild Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi.[22] [23]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There's going to be so much money flowing that Joe Allbaugh might even be convinced to bring his influence-peddling operation stateside again. In fact, if you were ever planning to become a Republican or give money to Republicans, by all means, do it now. Because all of the GOP patronage and pay-for-play operation that we've seen up till this point was probably just a prelude to what's coming," Josh Marshall wrote September 5, 2005, for his Talking Points Memo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then Marshall discovered that, on September 1, 2005, the Washington Post's Dan Balz had already spoken to Allbaugh "by telephone from Louisiana, where he is helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm, [and] said Katrina has left behind a situation that evokes the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001, though without as much loss of life. 'It is unreal,' he said. 'When you see the pictures on television, it really cannot do the devastation and the damage justice.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Now," Marshall said September 6, 2005, "if you figure that an article that appeared on the September 1st was probably reported out on Wednesdy August 31st, perhaps this is one of those cases that show how the public sector just can't match the pace of the private sector, seeing as Allbaugh seems to have beaten most of the folks from FEMA, the agency he ran before handing it off to Michael Brown, into the disaster area."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marshall confessed that he had been "so focused on Allbaugh's Iraq operation, that [he] had lost track of what he was up to on the domestic rain-making activities: "First, there's Blackwell Fairbanks, LLC,LOCKHEED &nbsp;the outfit he set up with Andrew D. Lundquist, the guy who ran Vice President [Dick] Cheney's energy policy task force. And then of course there's Allbaugh's main shop, The Allbaugh Company, the one Haley Barbour helped him set up along with New Bridge Strategies, the Iraq venture."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marshall figured that Allbaugh was "in Louisiana wearing the Allbaugh Company hat, seeing as how a few months back he signed on as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to 'educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh and Halliburton's KBR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Joe Allbaugh, the Oklahoman known for his flat-top haircut and loyalty to President Bush, has a new client: Halliburton, the Houston-based company once led by" Vice President Dick Cheney. [7]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, a "close adviser" to George W. Bush "during his Texas days, registered [in March 2005] to lobby on behalf of Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary." Allbaugh is CEO of The Allbaugh Company, LLC, a "Washington, D.C.-based corporate strategy and counsel firm." His wife, Diane Allbaugh, is a partner at The Allbaugh Company and is "also listed on the registration, which was filed last week with the Senate Office of Public Records." [8] [9]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Halliburton spokesperson said that Allbaugh "had not been commissioned to do any direct lobbying" but had been hired by KBR "as a consultant to provide strategy support for our Government and Infrastructure business." [10]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, Allbaugh's "lobbying disclosure form says the company will 'educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues.'" [11</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senior Advisor to Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee announced on October 30th 2007 that Joe Allbaugh will serve as Senior Advisor to the Rudy Giuliani campaign. Allbaugh will advise the campaign on general strategy and homeland security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trivia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh has a nephew, Jeremy Allbaugh, who served in the United States Marine Corps, and was killed on July 5th, 2007 while in Iraq.[24]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SourceWatch Resources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Bush administration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;? David Stout, "Agency Chief Facing Test Of a Lifetime On Response," New York Times, September 14, 2001, p. A19.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? 2.0 2.1 Dan Balz, "The Governor's 'Iron Triangle' Points the Way to Washington," Washington Post, July 23, 1999, p. C1.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? 3.0 3.1 Edwin Chen, "Bush Camp Attempts to Head Off Skirmish Over Nominee Ashcroft", Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2001, p. A16.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Adam Nagourney and Frank Bruni, "Gatekeeper to Running Mate: Cheney's Road to Candidacy," New York Times, July 28, 2000, p. A1.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Edward Walsh, "Did Cheney Pass His Own Test?; Questions on Voting, Stock Options Topped His Screening List," Washington Post, September 24, 2000, p. A13.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Dana Milbank, "Armies of Strategists Set Up Bases in Florida," Washington Post, November 13, 2000, p. A14.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? "Allbaugh Confirmed as Chief of FEMA," Los Angeles Times, February 16, 2001, p. A15.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? "The Emergency Freight Train," Washington Post, April 25, 2001, p. A30.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Eric Slater, "FEMA Director Tours Davenport Devastation," Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2001, p. A31.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Philip Shenon, "White House Battles Cuts In Spending For Disasters," New York Times, June 21, 2002, p. A22.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? James Gerstenzang, "Bush Puts FEMA in Charge of Domestic Terrorism Response". Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2001, p. A21.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Michael Janofsky, "Attacks Halt Meeting," New York Times, September 12, 2001, p. A5.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Vicki Kemper, "FEMA Chief, a Key Bush Advisor, Announces Resignation," Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2002, p. A32.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Ken Silverstein, "Top FEMA Jobs: No Experience Required". Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2005, p. A10.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Nir Rosen, "Riding Shotgun with Our Shadow Army in Iraq," Mother Jones, May 1, 2007.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Thomas B. Edsall and Juliet Eilperin, "Lobbyists Set Sights On Money-Making Opportunities in Iraq," Washington Post, October 2, 2003, p. A21.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Gail Russell Chaddock, "Targeting no-bid deals," Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 2003, p. 2.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Sarasohn, Judy. "All-Republican Givers and Receivers". The Washington Post, March 11, 2004, p. A25.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Judy Sarasohn, "Lobbying Firm Adds Another GOP Link," The Washington Post, March 14, 2002, p. A25.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Thomas B. Edsall, "Former FEMA Chief Is at Work on Gulf Coast," The Washington Post, September 8, 2005, p. A27.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Jochi J. Dreazen, "Connections Are Key to Contracts For Katrina Aid," Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2005, p. B1.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Yochi J. Dreazen, "In Katrina's Wake: U.S. Names 5 Firms to Build Housing". Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2005, p. A10.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? "Firms with Bush-Cheney ties clinching Katrina deals," USA Today, September 10, 2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? http://www.militarycity.com/valor/2891936.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">External links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Joe Allbaugh company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh Company Client List, which includes the Baton Rouge-based The Shaw Group, Inc., which is advertising "Hurricane Recovery Projects- Apply Here!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Newsmeat article about Joe Allbaugh's campaign contributions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Allbaugh Company lobbying registration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Real News Project investigation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FEMA Director Joe M. Allbaugh, fema.gov.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert Bryce, "The fab four. Meet the people maneuvering behind the scenes to put George W. Bush in the White House," Salon, June 16, 1999. See page two: "Joe Allbaugh -- The Muscle."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dan Balz, "Bush's 'Iron Triangle' Points Way to Washington," Washington Post, July 23, 1999; Allbaugh profile.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People: Joe Allbaugh, Forbes.com, October 12, 2001: "National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"FEMA Director Allbaugh to step down," CNN, December 16, 2002.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mary Louise, "FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh Resigns: Skeletons Here, There, and Everywhere......Literally," prisonplanet.com, [December 2002].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joshua Micah Marshal, "File this one under Un-#$%@#*&-believable," Talking Points Memo, September 25, 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Douglas Jehl, "Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq ," New York Times, September 30, 2003: "The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the FEMA until March."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael S. Gerber, "Former Bush adviser 'consulting' for KBR. Allbaugh to work for Halliburton, but won't 'lobby'," dcexaminer.com, March 22, 2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Timothy Noah, "Joe Allbaugh, Disaster Pimp. 'I don't buy the revolving door argument,' said Bush's former FEMA chief," Slate, September 7, 2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bill Berkowitz, "Joe Allbaugh's Moneymaking Mission to the Gulf Coast: Less than two weeks after Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the former FEMA head was on the scene to drum up business for his clients]", MediaTransparency, September 12, 2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wikipedia also has an article on Joe M. Allbaugh. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Categories: Politics | Politicians | Hurricane Katrina | American lobbyists | George W. Bush administration controversies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/11/09/7360/joe-allbaugh-who-helped-put-george-w-bush-white-house-now-running-perry-campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh, the no-nonsense campaign manager for George W. Bush in 2000 who now runs an international security consulting firm, has quietly taken over the reins of the beleaguered campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh was brought on with several GOP veterans a few weeks ago to help energize the Perry White House bid. He has now assumed the top manager’s slot, which was held before by Texan Rob Johnson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson, who ran Perry's last gubernatorial campaign but was new to national politics, will be traveling more with Perry in coming weeks, say Perry fundraisers and strategists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Monday, Allbaugh ran conference calls with Perry allies and strategists where he was giving assignments in a forceful way, according to one participant on the call. The abrupt change comes after Allbaugh spent a week on the road with Perry in Iowa and other states. His role was formalized over the weekend.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The move is aimed at improving Perry’s standing in the national polls and overall performance. Perry has fallen from being a top contender who was ahead of Mitt Romney for a while, to single or low double digits in recent surveys. Perry has been criticized in the media for his lackluster debate performances and for a rambling recent speech in New Hampshire where some viewers suggested he was intoxicated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Perry campaign raised an impressive $17 million in just under 50 days. Those funds are now being tapped for an aggressive ad drive in Iowa and South Carolina, two states that are critical to Perry’s prospects for winning the GOP nomination.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, who ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the start of the Bush administration, left after a couple years to go into international consulting with long-time lobbyist Ed Rogers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh teamed up with Rogers at New Bridge Strategies, which was launched to facilitate business deals in the Middle East not long after the Iraq war started in 2003. The firm was set up “to help companies evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S. led war in Iraq,” according to its website at the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later, Allbaugh had a hand in winning contracts for American companies after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Allbaugh’s clients reportedly did quite well. The Shaw Group, a large construction firm, won a contract worth as much as $100 million to provide emergency housing and renovate buildings. Another client, Halliburton, snared a contract worth $30 million to rebuild Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Currently, Allbaugh heads the eponymous Allbaugh International Group, a security consulting business with offices in Washington, Austin, Oklahoma City as well as overseas in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm’s website boasts that it “provides world class emergency, security, disaster and anti-terrorism planning,” among other services. And its clients include “governmental agencies, private companies and select individuals.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">coruption db:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joseph Allbaugh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last Updated: July 16, 2008</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Starting out as an GOP “go-fer”, Allbaugh rose to “go-to” guy for George W.Bush’s campaign contributors, then along with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, completed George W. Bush’s “Iron Triangle” of political advisors. In 2001, he was named head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA). Soon after, Allbaugh started making really serious money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, just before leaving office, Allbaugh arranged an extraordinary, but little known boon for a Friend Of George (FOG). He delivered a sole source $146 million contract for the nation’s emergency water supply, the first of its kind, to a Georgia family firm named Lipsey, with no emergency water delivery experience and only 14 employees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Lipsey family however, is also the nation’s 2nd largest gun wholesaler, a major GOP fundraiser, and head of both the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Hurricane Katrina hit two years later, at New Orleans’ Convention Center alone, nearly twenty thousand people went without water for up to four days, followed by conflicting official explanations. A Congressional committee found that Lipsey had overcharged the government at least $8 million for the work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Businessman Allbaugh also found fortune in Katrina’s aftermath. As partner in a Washington total access lobby firm, he helped funnel contracts worth hundreds of millions to clients such as Halliburton, and, suddenly converted GOP benefactor The Shaw Group construction company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The big money flowed however, as it still does, from Iraq war contracting. &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh started his career in the Oklahoma GOP. Early on he was also lobbyist for a neighbor’s startup company. The neighbor’s name was Michael Brown, later Allbaugh’s replacement as FEMA director.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps as portend of things to come, Brown’s startup company, despite young Allbaugh’s lobbying efforts, failed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh himself faced lawsuits alleging financial misconduct in the ‘80s. In’88 he was given a job with notorious billionaire Jackson Stephens, who helped bailout George W’s failed oil companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Returning to his political climbing career, Allbaugh rose to be Oklahoma’s Deputy Secretary of Transportation, while managing several federal and state GOP campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Early in 1994, Bush hired Allbaugh to work on his Texas gubernatorial campaign. Allbaugh then became Gov. Bush’s Chief of Staff.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1998, he was centerstage in the Texas “funeralgate” scandal. Eliza May, director of the state’s Funeral Services Commission, charged he pressured her to drop a license investigation into SCI, the world's largest funeral company, and major Bush contributor. Instead, she fined the company $450,000, and was soon fired. May sued for wrongful discharge, and eventually won a settlement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2000 Allbaugh became the Bush-Cheney national campaign director. Cheney and Allbaugh reportedly grew so close that, after the elction, Cheney sold his opulent Washington townhouse to Allbaugh, for just $690,000. That same year, Bush appointed Allbaugh director of FEMA. During his tenure, Allbaugh slashed the professional staff, and turned over much of FEMA’s work to private contractors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year before Allbaugh took over FEMA, his wife, Diane, lobbied on behalf of several disaster-relief companies.. Four years earlier in Texas, Diane’s lobbying sparked a scandal when she got $250,000 in contracts just months after her husband became the Governor Bush’s Chief of Staff. This time, the year before 911, Diane’s lobbying for disaster relief companies went unnoticed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Allbaugh stepped down from FEMA in ‘03, he installed former neighbor Michael Brown, (“Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job”) as Director. Allbough had hired Brown as FEMA general counsel in ’01.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Absent from Brown’s resume was that he’d just been fired from his last job, commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. He’d reportedly tried to pay off an Association attorney who’d been looking into certain of Brown’s transactions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005 Brown was forced to resign another post, this time as FEMA Director, following his clueless performance during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private citizen Allbaugh’s disaster relief involvement was quite profitable. He’d opened a second lobbying firm with his wife. Called the Allbaugh Group, it focused on getting US Government contracts. Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, hired the firm, as did construction conglomerate The Shaw Group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shaw landed two Katrina contracts of up to $100 million each to rebuild housing and levees in the Gulf Coast. KBR was hired to repair Gulf Coast naval facilities and provide facilities for FEMA workers in New Orleans. It also landed Katrina contracts to pump floodwater and build a temporary morgue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking back, those successes, and much larger ones to follow, seem predestined.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh had also become a partner of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (former head of the GOP) in an interlocking group of firms headed by Bush White House alumni, cadre and family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, Allbaugh and Barbour opened a lobbying firm called New Bridge Strategies, funded by the BGR group, named for Barbour and former President HW Bush assistants Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rodgers. BGR had also delivered many $100s of millions in Katrina contracts for its clients, including $568 million for Florida firm Ash-Britt, one of Jeb Bush’s big fans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh is Board Chairman of New Bridge Strategies. Its CEO is Jamal Daniel, a longtime benefactor of President Bush’s oft-scandalized brother Neil. Neil himself is listed as a Consultant to New Bridge Strategies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jamal Daniel, whose father was a founder of the Syrian Baath Party, also co-chairs other companies with brother Neil, including Crest Investments, Ignite and Silvermat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies’s website trumpets is ability to secure contracts in Iraq.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm is also a principal shareholder in military contractor Diligence LLC, with Allbough as its Deputy Chairman. Diligence’s mideast subsidiary is owned by Mohammed Al-Sagar, chairman of the Kuwait Parliament’s foreign relations committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diligence, much like Blackwater, provides security for corporate executives and companies in Iraq. Even more so than Blackwater, Diligenc’s Board and officers are comprised of former CIA and State Dept officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies and Diligence share staff and office space in the Barbour Griffith & Rodgers’ offices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2004, Allbaugh teamed up with Andrew Lundquist, former director of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force and a Republican staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to form a third group called Blackwell Fairbanks. The firm’s first client was Lockheed Martin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Categories</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">International Finance | Middlemen | Government Officials | Information Technology | Environment | Functionaries | Homeland Security | Defense | Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington Monthly, Sept 1, 2005: www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“K Street: Allbaugh Is Just Making a Living,” The National Journal,” 7/3/04.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Muckraker Katrina,” The Texas Observer, 10/7/2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Texas Monthly Talks; Joe Allbaugh,” Texas Monthly, 8/1/06.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Joe Allbaugh: Big Man on Campaign,” The Washington Post, 1999.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Who Is Joe Allbaugh?” Slate, 11/1/00.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Joe Allbaugh, Disaster Pimp" Slate, 9/7/05.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Firms with Bush-Cheney ties clinching Katrina deals,” Reuters, 9/10/05.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Funeral Scandal Time Line,” Salon, 8/20/99.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Lobbyists Set Sights On Money-Making Opportunities in Iraq,” Washington Post, 10/2/03.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Employer: Lobbyist, Campaign Manager for George W. Bush for 2000 election, former FEMA director</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biography:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh, born in 1952, has been active in Republican politics since volunteering for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign as a 12-year-old. After spending his early career working for Republican politicians in Texas and Oklahoma, Allbaugh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rose to national prominence when he served as campaign manager for George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential run. His duties included vetting Dick Cheney for the vice presidency. In 2004, Cheney, while speaking at the NRA convention, said, “I’m…delighted to see my good friend, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh … It’s always good to have a firearm if you get into real trouble, but the next best thing is Joe Allbaugh.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Allbaugh was confirmed as President Bush’s first Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director in 2001. Allbaugh hired Michael Brown to serve as general counsel and then tapped him as his replacement for FEMA director when he left the agency in 2003 to work as a lobbyist. As of 2011, Allbaugh International Group, LLC was a “George Mason” level donor in NRA’s corporate donor “Ring of Freedom,” meaning that his lobbying firm has given the NRA between $50,000 and $99,999. The firm’s clients have included KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, and British Petroleum (BP), who paid the Allbaugh International Group $60,000 in 2007.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Controversial Actions and Statements:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a June 2012 email to POLITICO, Allbaugh wrote about President Barack Obama, “Our leader is more pomp than circumstance. Again, no leadership. Hell, I could do better than he is doing. All hat, no cattle.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican Party (GOP) |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Shaw Group—represented by Allbaugh’s lobbying firm—was awarded $200 million in no-bid federal government contracts to repair damage done by the hurricane. Allbaugh’s hand-selected replacement as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, was leading the agency at the time. When criticized for lobbying and consulting with an agency he used to head, Allbaugh responded, “I don't buy the 'revolving door' argument. This is America. We all have a right to make a living."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lobbying Activity | Political Corruption |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh lobbied for tax perks for the River Birch Landfill company in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, the FBI raided River Birch’s offices as part of a criminal investigation into allegations of “pay-to-play” politics between River Birch and local government officials in Jefferson Parish.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lobbying Activity |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, shortly after Allbaugh became FEMA director, FEMA awarded a large emergency water supply contract to Lipsey Mountain Water. The move was unusual because Lipsey had no production capacity and only 15 employees—they had to purchase their water directly from Nestle Waters North America, the former holder of the contract. The Lipsey family is also is also one of the nation’s largest gun wholesalers. Like Allbaugh International Group, Lipsey’s Inc. is an NRA corporate donor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political Corruption | Republican Party (GOP) |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May 2001, Allbaugh was called to testify before a Senate committee while serving as the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management,” he told the committee. “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” Four years later, FEMA received widespread criticism for their inadequate response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. At that time, FEMA was headed by the man Allbaugh handpicked to be his replacement: Michael Brown.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Poverty</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2001, during Allbaugh’s FEMA director confirmation process, he indicated in a disclosure that he had never been a party to an administrative or civil proceeding. In fact, in 1990, Allbaugh participated in bankruptcy proceedings, listing liabilities of nearly $300,000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political Corruption |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh was involved in “Funeralgate,” a controversy in Texas during the late 1990s. Eliza May, director of Texas Funeral Service Commission, was forced out of her job after she launched an investigation into the business practices of Service Corporation International (SCI), the nation’s largest end-of-life services provider. SCI founder Roger Waltrip was a personal friend of the Bush family and made large contributions to Bush’s political campaign and his father’s presidential library. SCI officials met with Allbaugh, then Texas Governor George W. Bush’s chief-of-staff, a number of times prior to May’s dismissal to complain about her investigation. May’s filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against SCI and the State of Texas, eventually settling for over $200,000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political Corruption |</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, Rove, Norton, Barbour, Brulte = Inside Bush's Indian Bureau - A labyrinth of lobbyists is manufacturing millions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Barrett, Jennifer Suh - April 27th, 2004 - http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,barrett,53013,1.h...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Wayne Smith ... the '90s, he'd been chief deputy to California's Republican attorney general ... at 52, he was assistant deputy secretary at Interior, managing the $3.5 billion budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and overseeing the hotly politicized Indian casino industry ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... in his new job—which he got on the recommendation of a colleague from his AG days, Sue Wooldridge, top aide to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Neal McCaleb, who was Smith's immediate boss and ran BIA, put him in charge of gaming ... BIA remained a bureaucratic land where the only chiefs are buttoned-down lobbyists, raking in millions from tribes whose casinos are virtually franchises to print influence-peddling largesse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith was troubled early ... his office was lobbied on behalf of two tribes by Diane Allbaugh, the wife of Joe Allbaugh, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 2000 national campaign manager for Bush. Diane Allbaugh, who worked at a firm headed by former Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour, appeared on behalf of a Louisiana casino developer under contract with the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, a Connecticut tribe then tied to Donald Trump. McCaleb urged Smith to take her calls, explaining that he and Joe Allbaugh were old Oklahoma friends and that Allbaugh had "helped convince the White House" to install him at BIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... lobbyist who concerned Smith more than any other ... he'd been on the transition working group for Interior, staffing the agency. The dark force of Indian gaming, retained as a hidden consultant by tribes and developers across the country, was Roger Stone, a veteran of eight Republican presidential campaigns and star of the Miami/Dade recount shutdown. Scott Reed is often his up-front lobbyist face.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... Reed began leaning on Smith in late January 2002. Smith even got a note supporting the Stone faction from the Republican leader of the California state senate, Jim Brulte. Stone had recommended the retention of a consulting firm owned by Brulte's former chief of staff, Tom Ross, and Ross wrote the memo summarizing the Buena Vista case that Brulte enclosed. Later in 2002, Stone would host a fundraiser for Brulte at his 40 Central Park South apartment and take Brulte to visit Stone's longtime client Donald Trump. The Brulte intervention sent a particularly strong message to Smith because he'd attended a 2001 Palm Springs meeting involving Karl Rove and a dozen tribes, where Brulte was introduced as "the administration's main man in California—especially for Indian matters." .</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;2/3 of haley b firm!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US: Insiders' New Firm Consults on Iraq</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Douglas Jehl, New York Times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">September 30th, 2003</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March. Other directors include Edward M. Rogers Jr., vice chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to the first President George Bush and now have close ties to the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At a time when the administration seeks Congressional approval for $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq, part of an $87 billion package for military and other spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, the company's Web site, www .newbridgestrategies.com, says, "The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The site calls attention to the links between the company's directors and the two Bush administrations by noting, for example, that Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, was "chief of staff to then-Gov. Bush of Texas and was the national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president of the company, John Howland, said in a telephone interview that it did not intend to seek any United States government contracts itself, but might be a middleman to advise other companies that seek taxpayer-financed business. The main focus, Mr. Howland said, would be to advise companies that seek opportunities in the private sector in Iraq, including licenses to market products there. The existence of the company was first reported in The Hill, a Congressional newspaper.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Howland said the company was not trying to promote its political connections. He said that although Mr. Allbaugh, for example, had spent most of his career "in the political arena, there's a lot of cross-pollination between that world and the one that exists in Iraq today."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As part of the administration's postwar work in Iraq, the government has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to American businesses. Those contracts, some without competitive bidding, have included more than $500 million to support troops and extinguish oil field fires for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney led from 1995 until 2000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of the $3.9 billion a month that the administration is spending on military operations in Iraq, up to one-third may go to contractors who provide food, housing and other services, some military budget experts said. A spokesman for the Pentagon said today that the military could not provide an estimate of the breakdown.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Administration officials, including L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, have said all future contracts will be issued only as a result of competitive bidding. Already, the Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, http:// cpa-iraq.org/, lists 36 recent solicitations, including those for contractors who might sell new AK-47 assault rifles, nine-millimeter ammunition and other goods for new army and security forces.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies was established in May and recently began full-fledged operations, including opening an office in Iraq, its officials said. They added that a decision by the Governing Council of Iraq to allow foreign companies to establish 100 percent ownership of businesses in Iraq, an unusual arrangement in the Mideast, had added to the attractiveness of the market.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Howland is a principal of Crest Investment in Houston and was president of American Rice, once a major exporter to Iraq. Richard Burt, ambassador to Germany in the Reagan administration and a former assistant secretary of state, and Lord Powell, a member of the British House of Lords and an important military and foreign-policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, are among the 10 principals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, spent most of his career in Texas politics before Mr. Bush appointed him to head the federal disaster agency. Mr. Allbaugh, who now heads his own consulting firm here, did not return calls to his office today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Rogers, the vice chairman who was a deputy assistant to the first President Bush and an executive assistant to the White House chief of staff, is also vice chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, one of the best-connected Republican lobbying firms in the capital. Mr. Rogers founded it in 1991 with Haley Barbour, who became chairman of the Republican National Committee and is now running for governor of Mississippi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after leaving the White House, Mr. Rogers was publicly rebuked by the first President Bush after he signed a $600,000 contract to represent a Saudi, Sheik Kamal Adham, who was a main figure under scrutiny in a case that involved the Bank of Commerce and Credit International. Mr. Rogers canceled his contract to represent the sheik, former head of Saudi intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Griffith, a director of the new company, is chief operating officer of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which he joined in 1993. He was special assistant for intergovernmental affairs to the first President Bush and later worked under him as an assistant secretary of education.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until November, Mr. Rogers's wife, Edwina, was associate director of the National Economic Council at the White House. Reached by telephone today, Mr. Rogers said he did not want to speak for the record and referred a reporter to Mr. Howland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company Web site says the company was "created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Profile: New Bridge Strategies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Related Entities:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Has as boardmember Edward M. Rogers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Has as boardmember Lanny Griffith</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Employer of John Howland</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies was a participant or observer in the following events:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">May 2003: White House-Connected Lobbyists Form Company to Advise Companies on Doing Business in IraqEdit event &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An alliance of Republican lobbyists form the company New Bridge Strategies to seek rights for major US companies to distribute their products in Iraq. The website states the company has been “created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq.” As one unnamed partner at New Bridge will explain to the Washington Post in the fall of 2003, “Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products would be a gold mine. One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out 30 Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.” Another person involved in the company will note that an order signed by Paul Bremer in September (see September 19, 2003) allowing foreign companies to establish 100 percent ownership of firms in Iraq increases the attraction of doing business in Iraq. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/12/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 10/2/2003]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge has close connections to the Bush administration and highlights these ties on its website noting that its chairman, Joe Allbaugh, was “chief of staff to then-Gov. Bush of Texas and was the national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign.” The site also says, “The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003] Allbaugh dismisses criticisms that he is using his connections to profit from the war. “The stories I’ve seen have been couched as if people are trying to game the system, and that’s not what we’re about,” Allbaugh tells the New York Times. “We are trying to help Iraq become a capitalist country, and a leader throughout the Middle East. Iraqis themselves are asking for help…. We fought a war, we displaced a horrible, horrible regime, and as a part of that we have an obligation to help Iraqis. We can’t just leave in the middle of the night.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/6/2003]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Individuals involved in the company include:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bullet Joe M. Allbaugh, chairman. The majority of Allbaugh’s career was spent in Texas politics. He was chief of staff to Governor Bush; later became his 2000 presidential campaign manager, and then was appointed by Bush as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Allbaugh currently runs his own consulting firm, the Allbaugh Company. [ALLBAUGH COMPANY, 3/17/2007]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bullet John Howland, president. He is currently a principal of Crest Investment in Houston and formerly headed the company American Rice, which was once a major exporter to Iraq. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bullet Edward M. Rogers, vice chairman. Rogers served as a deputy assistant to President Bush Sr. and as an executive assistant to the White House chief of staff. In addition to his involvement in New Bridge Strategies, he is also vice chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, an extremely well-connected Republican lobbying firm. Rogers’s wife, Edwina, is an associate director of the White House National Economic Council. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bullet Lanny Griffith, a director. He is chief operating officer of Barbour Griffith & Rogers. He served under the first President Bush as special assistant for intergovernmental affairs and then worked under him again as an assistant secretary of education. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bullet Jamal Daniel, a principal. Daniel has been an associate of George Bush’s younger brother, Niel, for more than a decade. An investigation by the Financial Times will find that Daniel, along with John Howland, has “attempted to exploit their association with the president’s brother to help win business and investors” on several occasions. “Three people contacted by the FT have seen letters written by Neil Bush recommending business ventures promoted by Mr Howland, Mr Daniel and his family in the Middle East. Mr Daniel has also had his photograph taken with the elder Mr Bush. Such letters and photographs can be valuable props when doing business in the Middle East.” Daniel is also involved in the investment fund, Crest Investment Corporation, of which Howland is also a member. The firm, which employs Neil Bush as its co-chairman, helped fund Neil Bush’s educational software company, Ignite. And according to one Middle Eastern businessman, Daniel sometimes introduces himself to potential investors as a founding backer of the Ignite. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 12/11/2003]&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daniel, from a Christian Syrian family, also has links to Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party. The Financial Times reports he “is said to have been involved in the founding of the Baath Party and sustained links with it in both Syria and Iraq even after being expelled from Syria in about 1966 after Hafez al-Assad came to power. Mr Daniel has told friends that when he was young Tariq Aziz, later foreign minister of Iraq, was a visitor to the family home.” [FINANCIAL TIMES, 12/12/2003]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity Tags: Lanny Griffith, New Bridge Strategies, Jamal Daniels, Edward M. Rogers,John Howland, Joseph M. Allbaugh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joseph Allbaugh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starting out as an GOP “go-fer”, Allbaugh rose to “go-to” guy for George W.Bush’s campaign contributors, then along with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, completed George W. Bush’s “Iron Triangle” of political advisors. In 2001, he was named head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA). Soon after, Allbaugh started making really serious money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, just before leaving office, Allbaugh arranged an extraordinary, but little known boon for a Friend Of George (FOG). He &nbsp;delivered a sole source $146 million contract for the nation’s emergency water supply, the first of its kind, to a Georgia family firm named Lipsey, with no emergency water delivery experience and only 14 employees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Lipsey family however, is also the nation’s 2nd largest gun wholesaler, a major GOP fundraiser, and head of both the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and the National Association &nbsp;of Sporting Goods Wholesalers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Hurricane Katrina hit two years later, at New Orleans’ Convention Center alone, nearly twenty thousand people went without water for up to four days, followed by &nbsp;conflicting official explanations. A Congressional committee found that Lipsey had overcharged the government at least $8 million for the work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Businessman Allbaugh also found fortune in &nbsp;Katrina’s aftermath. &nbsp; As partner in a Washington total access lobby firm, he helped funnel contracts worth hundreds of millions to clients such as Halliburton, and, suddenly converted GOP benefactor The Shaw Group construction company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The big money flowed however, as it still does, from Iraq war contracting. &nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh started his career in the Oklahoma GOP. Early on he was also lobbyist for a neighbor’s startup company. The neighbor’s name was Michael Brown, later Allbaugh’s replacement as FEMA director.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps as portend of things to come, Brown’s startup company, despite young Allbaugh’s lobbying efforts, failed.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh himself &nbsp;faced lawsuits alleging &nbsp;financial misconduct in the ‘80s. In’88 he was given a job with notorious billionaire Jackson Stephens, who helped bailout George W’s failed oil companies.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Returning to his political climbing career, Allbaugh rose to be Oklahoma’s Deputy Secretary of Transportation, while managing several federal and state GOP campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Early in 1994, Bush hired Allbaugh to work on his Texas gubernatorial campaign. Allbaugh then became Gov. Bush’s Chief of Staff.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1998, he was centerstage in the Texas “funeralgate” scandal. Eliza May, director of the state’s Funeral Services Commission, charged he pressured her to drop a license investigation into SCI, the world's largest funeral company, and major Bush contributor. Instead, she fined the company $450,000, and was soon fired. May sued for wrongful discharge, and eventually won a settlement.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2000 Allbaugh &nbsp;became the Bush-Cheney national campaign director. Cheney and Allbaugh reportedly grew so close that, after the elction, Cheney sold his opulent Washington townhouse to Allbaugh, for just $690,000. That same year, Bush appointed Allbaugh director of FEMA. During his tenure, Allbaugh slashed the professional staff, and turned over much of FEMA’s work to private contractors&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year before Allbaugh took over FEMA, his wife, Diane, lobbied on behalf of several disaster-relief companies.. Four years earlier in Texas, Diane’s lobbying sparked a scandal when she got $250,000 in contracts just months after &nbsp;her husband became &nbsp;the Governor Bush’s Chief of Staff. This time, the year before 911, Diane’s lobbying for disaster relief companies went unnoticed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Allbaugh stepped down from FEMA in ‘03, he installed former neighbor Michael Brown, (“Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job”) as Director. Allbough had hired Brown as FEMA general counsel in ’01.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Absent from Brown’s resume was that he’d just been fired from his last job, commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. &nbsp;He’d reportedly tried to pay off an Association attorney who’d been looking into certain of Brown’s transactions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005 Brown was forced to resign another post, this time as FEMA Director, following his clueless performance during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private citizen Allbaugh’s disaster relief involvement was quite profitable. &nbsp;He’d opened a second lobbying firm with his wife. Called the Allbaugh Group, it focused on getting US Government contracts. Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, hired the firm, as did construction conglomerate The Shaw Group.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shaw landed two Katrina contracts of up to $100 million each to rebuild housing and levees in the Gulf Coast. KBR was hired to repair Gulf Coast naval facilities and provide facilities for FEMA workers in New Orleans. It also landed Katrina contracts to pump floodwater and build a temporary morgue.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking back, those successes, and much larger ones to follow, seem predestined.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh had also become a partner of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (former head of the GOP) in an interlocking group of firms headed by Bush White House alumni, cadre and family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, Allbaugh and Barbour opened a lobbying firm called New Bridge Strategies, funded by the BGR group, named for &nbsp;Barbour and former President HW Bush assistants Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rodgers. BGR had also delivered many $100s of millions in Katrina contracts for its clients, including $568 million for Florida firm Ash-Britt, one of Jeb Bush’s big fans.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh is Board Chairman of New Bridge Strategies. Its CEO is Jamal Daniel, a longtime benefactor of President Bush’s oft-scandalized brother Neil. Neil himself is listed as a Consultant to New Bridge Strategies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jamal Daniel, whose father was a founder of the Syrian Baath Party, also co-chairs other companies with brother Neil, including Crest Investments, Ignite and Silvermat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies’s website trumpets is ability to secure contracts in Iraq.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm is also a principal shareholder in military contractor Diligence LLC, with Allbough as its Deputy Chairman. Diligence’s mideast subsidiary is owned by Mohammed Al-Sagar, chairman of the Kuwait Parliament’s foreign relations committee.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diligence, much like Blackwater, provides security for corporate executives and companies in Iraq. Even more so than Blackwater, Diligenc’s Board and officers are comprised of former CIA and State Dept officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Bridge Strategies and Diligence share staff and office space in the Barbour Griffith & Rodgers’ offices.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2004, Allbaugh teamed up with Andrew Lundquist, former director of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force and a Republican staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to form a third group called Blackwell Fairbanks. The firm’s first client was Lockheed Martin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Categories</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zone_41 | Zone_41 | Zone_41 | Zone_41 | Zone_41 | Zone_41</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington Monthly, Sept 1, 2005:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“K Street: Allbaugh Is Just Making a Living,” The National Journal,” 7/3/04.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Muckraker Katrina,” The Texas Observer, 10/7/2005.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Texas Monthly Talks; Joe Allbaugh,” Texas Monthly, 8/1/06.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Joe Allbaugh: Big Man on Campaign,” The Washington Post, 1999.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Who Is Joe Allbaugh?” Slate, 11/1/00.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Joe Allbaugh, Disaster Pimp" Slate, 9/7/05.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Firms with Bush-Cheney ties clinching Katrina deals,” Reuters, 9/10/05.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Funeral Scandal Time Line,” Salon, 8/20/99.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Lobbyists Set Sights On Money-Making Opportunities in Iraq,” Washington Post, 10/2/03.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.nationalcorruptionindex.org/pages/profile.php?profile_id=57</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted By Russ Baker On June 14, 2006</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Days after Louisiana’s governor declared a state of emergency and the National Hurricane Center warned the White House that Hurricane Katrina could top the New Orleans levee system, the only FEMA official actually in New Orleans itself–Marty J. Bahamonde–was not even supposed to be there. He had been sent in advance of the storm and had been ordered to leave as it bore down, but could not because of the clogged roads. Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, was known to have made it to Baton Rouge but seemed out of reach.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Wednesday, Aug. 31, with tens of thousands trapped in the Superdome and looting out of control in the parts of the city still above water, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown directly: ”I know you know, the situation is past critical…Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water.”’ The response, when it came several hours later, was from a Brown aide, and did not address the warnings, but noted Brown’s desire to appear on a television program that evening. It included this key caveat: ”It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A week later, Brown would be replaced as on-site manager of the disaster. Blamed for his role in one of the largest domestic debacles in American history, Brown was still thinking of his own comfort: “I’m going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night’s sleep,” he told AP. In the midst of America’s worst natural (and manmade) disaster, it became clear that Brown was indeed lost in Margaritaville.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What has grown all too apparent in the months since Katrina is that much of the Bush-appointed federal leadership is every bit as inept and unqualified as Brown.<b> Each new crisis seems to expose still more cronyism and patronage at the very top of the country’s leading agencies. </b>The Medicare administrator Thomas Scully came from a job with the hospital association, stayed just long enough to pass the controversial and messy if business-friendly Medicare<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> drug benefit, then left to become a drug industry lobbyist</span>. Other stories are emerging at departments ranging from the Small Business Administration to the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mine Safety and Health Administration</span>. And the head of the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy had no prior experience in government contracting; he has since been arrested in connection with the sprawling corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From Harriet Miers (a Supreme Court nominee with no judicial experience) to Julie Myers (a virtual government neophyte named to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency), Bush has set aside principles of sound governance to reward loyal operatives and shore up personal and party alliances. Sometimes, his tactics are transparent. Miers was a longtime legal adviser and trouble-shooter to Bush; and<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Myers, the niece of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had at the time of her nomination recently married the chief of staff of her boss-to-be, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We still do not know the true extent to which the government has been filled with Michael Browns. This is in part because of the media. At one time, major news organizations had a reporter assigned to each large federal bureaucracy, making it harder to sail these appointments through and then hide the incompetence and malfeasance. Now only a disaster can shine the spotlight.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud and effective agency, into a national laughingstock?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On any level, it makes absolutely no sense that Michael Brown should have been holding any major government post. Prior to joining FEMA, his professional pinnacle had been to serve as an inspector of Arabian Horse judges; his highest governmental job had been an assistant to a city manager in a small Oklahoma city decades ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Brownie” had done no known political work for George W. Bush. He was not an industry figure. He was not even among the many longtime allies of the Bush family. The only answer the public has ever gotten in the aftermath of Katrina as to why Michael Brown headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a peculiar and highly dissatisfying one: Joe Allbaugh wanted him there. Allbaugh is the brash and powerful but little-known Bush confidant who preceded Brown as FEMA director. When Allbaugh came to Washington, he brought Brown with him and rapidly promoted him until Brown was positioned to take over the agency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why Michael Brown? Why, out of all the people Allbaugh had met over three decades as a GOP operative, did he place such confidence in a failed lawyer whose last job was a troubled tenure with an obscure association of show horse owners?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When pressed, the taciturn Allbaugh tersely replied that Brown was a<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> lifelong friend</span> in whom he had confidence. To this moment, that has remained the official, indeed only, explanation of how and why Michael Brown was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina struck.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But a Real News Project investigation, encompassing scores of interviews and hundreds of documents, has uncovered another reality. It begins with this astonishing fact: nearly all of Joe Allbaugh’s friends and acquaintances say they had never heard of Michael Brown, never met him, never even seen the two men in each other’s presence. To them, Michael Brown is a complete stranger. Allbaugh’s explanation of why he chose Brown as his heir apparent at FEMA baffles one and all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The truth, RealNews has learned, is that the relationship between the two is a decades-long hidden partnership designed to advance both men’s business and personal interests.</span> By all appearances, that relationship encompassed Allbaugh’s decision to ask Bush to let him run FEMA, and then his decision to <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">turn the place over to Brown so he could profit from their ties.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, as soon as Allbaugh left the agency, he began cashing in. Today, both Allbaugh and Brown are consultants, making money off their connections at FEMA and in the administration-tattered and tarnished though their legacies may be. And now FEMA is staffed by others put into position by the two men and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">run by David Paulison, best known for having advised Americans to stock up on duct tape as protection against future terrorist attacks.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is this really just about incompetence as a byproduct of a deeply ideological presidency? Or has a debilitating “culture of corruption” become deeply embedded in agencies like FEMA on which we literally rely for our lives? And just how far into the Bush White House does this dismaying story reach?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MEANWHILE, DOWN AT THE PADDOCK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a more perfect world, the media, the Congress and engaged citizens would have wanted to know a bit more-indeed a lot more-about Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown before confirming them in important managerial positions. Even a hard look at Brown’s last job before FEMA would have set off the appropriate alarms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Brown’s decade as Commissioner of Judges and Stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA) represents the longest employment he ever had,</span> and, arguably his most prestigious and greatest accomplishment. That Brown nevertheless knew it was a singularly inappropriate qualification for the leadership of FEMA is evident from FEMA’s official Brown biography, posted on its website, which <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">did not mention this job at all. </span>Brown, it turns out, had good reason to be modest about this portion of his career.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the new post into which Michael Brown stepped at IAHA was created, the organization’s members were told that their leadership had sought out a person with several key characteristics: competency, experience, and total independence from the cronyism of the horse world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, what IAHA members got was the virtual opposite. In retrospect, it looks to some like the fix was in.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brown’s job was to address concerns about the integrity of the horse judging process. But the main thing-almost the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">only notable thing-Brown did in his years with the IAHA was to pursue a politically-motivated investigation of the sport’s most successful trainer, a man who had angered powerful people with connections at the top of the Republican Party.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karl Hart, a Florida lawyer and longtime IAHA member who headed the group’s legal review committee, describes Brown’s efforts in this regard as an “obsessive vendetta.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The trainer, David Boggs, was accused of cosmetically altering the appearance of a show horse, a serious violation</span> of competition rules. Brown ordered Boggs banned from the show circuit for five years, a Draconian punishment tantamount to putting the trainer out of business. Boggs’s competitors were delighted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Boggs (who did not respond to interview requests) was, by most accounts, a talented and dedicated trainer whose<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> successes on the circuit were well deserved. But according to Hart and others, he was envied and even hated by several extremely rich Arabian Horse owners-owners who happened to also be very large Republican donors, including the late Bob Magness, a founder of the TCI cable giant[merge AT7T liberty media?]; David Murdock, the Dole food company billionaire; and the late Alec Courtelis, a Florida developer.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Courtelis had been one of George H.W. Bush’s major fundraisers, and the elder Bush was a frequent guest at Courtelis’s horse farm during his presidency. At an April 1990 fundraising dinner in Florida, Bush introduced Courtelis with the words “Here’s a man who breeds race horses for the same reason he works so hard for the party: only one place will do for Alec-first place.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To this day, Hart (along with other longtime IAHA elders) says he’s not sure whether or not Boggs was guilty. (IAHA’s top administrators declined requests for interviews about Brown.) Since the horse in question is today the preeminent sire of the breed, Hart thinks genetics may have been more of a factor in its near-perfect profile than the putative illegal cosmetic surgery. In any case,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Boggs filed a battery of lawsuits against both the association and Brown, the financial toll of which contributed to the association’s near-bankruptcy and eventual merger </span>with another group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is no evidence that the big donors knew in advance about plans to hire Brown; Courtelis and Magness are deceased, and Murdock did not respond to an interview request. Yet, Brown’s performance clearly pleased influential sectors of the IAHA, as is apparent from the special treatment he was accorded. While other staffers had to report to work each day, Brown, on a full salary, was<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> allowed to work from his sprawling, mountain-air home in Lyons-more than an hour’s drive north of IAHA’s headquarters in Denver. His lifestyle was so pleasant and relaxed that some in Lyons assumed him to be semi-retired. </span>James Van Dyke, chef-owner at Lyons’ Gateway Café, says Brown had leisurely lunches at the restaurant almost daily. “He seemed to have a lot of time on his hands,” says Van Dyke.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brown’s single-minded pursuit of Boggs contrasted sharply with a pronounced reluctance to pursue another case that seemed to have considerable merit-one involving Murdock’s trainer, who was accused of filing false papers for a show horse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ironically, it would be Murdock himself, in his zeal to help Brown’s cause, who would eventually sink him. One day, he mentioned to Hart that, at <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Michael Brown’s request, he’d written him a $50,000 personal check</span>, ostensibly for a legal-defense fund to deal with Boggs’s suits. Hart was staggered to hear this, since the association was already paying Brown’s legal bills.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hart took Brown aside at an IAHA board meeting and told him what he knew<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Brown panicked. “He grabbed me, literally, and pushed me into a closet,” says Hart. “He said, ‘Is there any way you and I can work this out?’”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There wasn’t, and Brown was terminated immediately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But only a few months later, in February, 2001, he resurfaced- as general counsel and later deputy director and chief operating officer of the vast bureaucracy at FEMA </span>(his positions before he took over the agency altogether.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While most folks who knew Brown over the years were startled to see a person of such modest accomplishments in a high Washington post, the IAHA brass was not. As Hart recalls, “Brown had been saying for six months or more that, if Bush was elected, he was going to have a high position in Washington because he was very close to someone who was very active in Bush’s campaign.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HOW MIKE MET JOE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why exactly would this apparent incompetent be tapped for one of the most sensitive jobs in post-9/11 Washington? The key to that mystery lies in the career of Joseph Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s adjutant since 1994, who first met Brown back in the 1980s when both were young men starting out professionally in Oklahoma.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Typical of those baffled by the revelation of Allbaugh and Brown’s mutually beneficial business and personal relationship is Mike Williams, one of Allbaugh’s closest friends and a boating buddy. Williams, who stays in regular touch with Allbaugh, says he<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> doesn’t know Brown at all. </span>As to Brown’s appointment at FEMA, “I’m surprised by that.” Williams says Allbaugh never had an entourage he could have brought along to Washington: “He didn’t really have any people. He was pretty much a one-man show. (Neither Allbaugh nor Brown consented to an interview.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Contrary to early, widely-disseminated news accounts, Allbaugh, 53, and Brown, 51, were not college roommates – nor did they even attend the same university. </span>The two men’s public lives and career paths up until FEMA look like parallel lines on a chart – distinct and unconnected.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet there was a connection, one that only showed up through extensive records searches.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Real News Project has uncovered documents showing that, in the early 80s, as Brown was finding his professional footing and Allbaugh was already rising in the Oklahoma Republican apparatus, Allbaugh moved into an Oklahoma City house next door to the brother of Michael Brown’s wife, Tamara. Bill Oxley, Michael Brown and Tamara Oxley Brown had all grown up together in the small Oklahoma Panhandle town of Guymon. (Bill Oxley’s telephone number is unlisted; he did not respond to a note left at his house requesting an interview)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first verifiable direct link between Allbaugh and Michael Brown is in an obscure company called Campground Development Corporation, which Brown and his brother-in-law, Bill Oxley, formed in 1985. For two years, records show, Campground Development employed Joe Allbaugh as a state capitol lobbyist. Prior to that, Allbaugh himself had started an oil-and-gas partnership called Great American Resources, and brought in Bill Oxley’s wife as a partner. The secretary and treasurer of that firm was <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Allbaugh’s then-wife, Gypsy Hogan, who says she had no idea what the business was about and wasn’t comfortable with large amounts of unexplained cash flowing in – or Allbaugh’s request that she sign a series of blank checks. When she began to demand answers, she says, Allbaugh angrily warned her to mind her own business. Hogan also remembers that, shortly before she asked him for a divorce, Allbaugh claimed to be in the C.I.A.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Allbaugh was pursuing his private ventures, he was also moving up in the G.O.P. firmament. He’d started in college as a driver for U.S. Senator Henry Bellmon (Republican of Oklahoma and longtime friend of George H.W. Bush),</span> then became Bellmon’s field representative before becoming an operative for the national Republican Party. In 1976, he held a top post in the statewide Ford for President campaign. By 1980, Allbaugh was traveling widely, working on campaigns throughout the country; in 1984 he rose to be deputy regional coordinator for the Reagan-Bush reelection campaign, responsible for 11 Western States. That year, by his own account, he met George W. Bush, who was in Oklahoma City on behalf of his father’s campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Allbaugh was helping elect Republicans, he was also helping himself along the way. Among his investors in Great American were several big GOP donors, including Mabel McPhaill, a wealthy widow from Visalia, California. According to her grandson, Russell Gates, who accompanied her to several fundraising events, “All she did was give money.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But not just to the GOP. Records obtained by The Real News Project show that in 1984, while running the regional Reagan-Bush reelection campaign,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Allbaugh personally borrowed $24,000 from McPhaill. He never repaid the bulk of the debt. When McPhaill died in 1996 at age 92, her $3 million inheritance had shrunk to a net worth of $50,000 – with much of her fortune, according to Gates, being enticed into GOP causes and dubious investments like Allbaugh’s.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is doubtful whether, prior to his meeting George W. Bush, Allbaugh’s business ventures ever made money for anyone, himself included. Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, contain a file from 1990 detailing bankruptcy proceedings in which Allbaugh and his second wife, Diane, unloaded nearly $300,000 of debt, ranging from a $65,000 home loan to a $400 balance on a Foley’s Department Store charge card – while their gross income was over $80,000 annually. Allbaugh neglected to disclose the bankruptcy and related lawsuits during the Senate hearing to confirm his appointment as FEMA director, in 2001. On a sworn disclosure form, when asked whether he had ever been a party to any administrative proceeding or civil litigation, he simply wrote “no.” That’s a potentially problematical answer, and of heightened relevance since Cheney aide Scooter Libby’s indictment on charges of lying to a grand jury and to investigators. Says G. Jack Chin, an expert on testimony and Co-Director of Arizona University’s Law, Criminal Justice and Security Program: “People don’t forget going bankrupt, so I’d think a strong case could be made for perjury.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That Allbaugh would not want his insolvency made public is unsurprising. As George W. Bush’s campaign manager, he would preside over a record-breaking fundraising spree engorged on promises to credit issuers that new laws would make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to declare bankruptcy. He also might have faced scrutiny over some of his business associates: <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Grant Forth, another limited partner in Great American Resources, would later be convicted in a Nevada federal court of mail and wire fraud and serve time in federal prison</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Oklahoma, Allbaugh was perhaps best known for his fearlessness in pursuing deals that raised grave conflict-of-interest questions. In 1987, he was again working for Henry Bellmon, now governor of Oklahoma, as a top aide who interacted with highway officials. In December of that year, court records show, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Allbaugh took a $30,000 bank loan guaranteed by a large road contractor who was engaged in a steady stream of disputes with the state over shoddy work practices. Allbaugh never repaid the loan and in 1990 the court ordered that his wages be garnished.<b> Neal McCaleb, the man who ran Oklahoma’s Transportation Department </b>at the time, would later be appointed by President George W. Bush as U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. (Shortly thereafter, Allbaugh’s wife would be accused by a McCaleb subordinate of improperly lobbying McCaleb, a Chickasaw Indian, on behalf of client tribes seeking beneficial gaming decisions.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From there, the stakes got higher. In 1988, Allbaugh left government to take a job with Stephens Inc., an investment-banking firm run by an old Bellmon friend. When Allbaugh arrived,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Jack Stephens was busy currying favor with Vice President George H.W. Bush, then likely to be elected president. He gave $100,000, the legal maximum, to Bush’s campaign and helped bail out the vice-president’s son, George W. Bush: it was Stephens who helped arrange for a Saudi oil magnate to buy an ownership stake in Harken Energy, W.’s oil company, which was struggling to stay afloat.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh’s ability to hop back and forth between the letting and the getting of contracts was clear to all-including Allbaugh himself. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When a reporter from the Daily Oklahoman observed to Allbaugh that he had gone from serving as Bellmon’s Oklahoma Turnpike Authority liaison to working for Stephens Inc., which was hoping to do business with the Authority, Allbaugh replied, “Golly, what a coincidence.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In September 1990, Allbaugh left Stephens for reasons unknown. His resume suggests that he was then unemployed until February, 1991, when he reappeared back on the other side of the customer-service counter, this time as deputy secretary of transportation under Democratic governor David Walters. (A grand jury later issued<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> eight felony indictments against Walters, </span>who pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge of violating state campaign-contribution laws.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh’s arm’s-length friend Brown, meanwhile, was racking up his own record of dubious public service throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. In his much remarked-upon first job, as assistant to the city manager of Edmond, Oklahoma, he was <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">closely allied with the town’s mayor, Carl Reherman, who had been Brown’s political-science professor in college. His immediate boss from those days, city manager Bill Dashner, characterized Brown as a “mole” for Reherman, providing him with information regarding controversial development projects over which the two quarreled</span>. In an interview, Reherman denied that, and noted that the council voted unanimously on most matters. Perhaps the biggest bone of contention over the years was a public-works project that became so expensive the city defaulted on its payments to the Army Corps of Engineers-the same highly politicized outfit with which FEMA is joined at the hip. Brown did not mention this experience during his confirmation hearings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Brown would later be exposed, during the Katrina debacle, for having tried to exaggerate his credentials for FEMA by falsely telling the Senate that he was an “assistant city manager,” responsible for police, fire, and emergency services. As negligible as this position sounded, in truth, he’d been even less, a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">mere assistant to a city manager-”more like an intern,” the town’s P.R. liaison told Time</span>.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether he began as gopher or go-getter, Brown moved quickly after his arrival in Edmond into a series of posts of increasing influence, including<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> election to a short stint on the city council and a job with the state legislature, where he helped draft legislation creating the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA), a little-known public-power entity that he would later chair. The attraction of this unpaid position was explained by Brown, who noted to others that it allowed him to interact with major bond-underwriting firms, all clamoring for the group’s lucrative business. When Brown was forced to relinquish his seat on the utility board because he had moved from Edmond, he found his way back by persuading the town of Goltry, Oklahoma, population 800 and one stop light, to join the energy consortium and make him its representative.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a questionnaire he supplied to the Senate during his confirmation process, Brown wrote: “Michael D. Brown Hydroelectric Generation and Dam Project Named in my honor by the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority Kay County, Oklahoma, 1988.” That minor tribute (dubbed by one wag <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Dam Michael Brown”) would amount to his sole pre-Katrina familiarity with the subject of flood control. But according to the longtime OMPA general manager, Roland H. Dawson, the facility itself is actually called Kaw Dam, while the only tribute to Brown is a plaque from the board he chaired.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After passing the Oklahoma bar in 1982, Brown moved to the oil boomtown of Enid, where he was hired by the law firm of Stephen Jones, a flamboyant attorney who went on to defend Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.</span> There, according to his other sister-in-law, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Brown bobbled a wrongful-death suit for a woman whose husband’s car was hit by a train when crossing signals failed to work. When the firm busted up, literally, after a fistfight that left Jones sporting a shiner on the front page of the local paper, the partners divvied up the staff. Thirty-four staffers found immediate work. Brown was one of two staffers no one wanted. “When I saw Brown up there at FEMA, I had a premonition of bad things to come,” recalls Jones.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the ensuing years, Brown would be sued for skipping out of shared law offices without paying his share of the rent-a piece of civil litigation he (like Allbaugh) neglected to include on forms submitted as part of his Senate confirmation proceedings to become deputy director of FEMA. This despite the obligation that federal nominees disclose such litigation. He would also be believed by his sister-in-law to have aided her brother, Bill Oxley, in changing their father’s will in a way that left the Browns and Oxleys living well while she and her husband were reduced to virtual paupers. During those years, if Brown’s resume is to be believed, he was also doing legal work on behalf of the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Oklahoma Republican Party.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this was, of course, mere cold French fries compared to what would come. For Michael Brown, the good times would not begin to roll until early 2001, with a call from Joe Allbaugh. For Allbaugh himself, the good times began in early 1994, with a call from George W. Bush.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BUSH’S ENFORCER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The official story is that Bush’s gubernatorial campaign lacked a strong hand at the tiller, and that Henry Bellmon’s people recommended Joe Allbaugh as just the man to steer the campaign to victory. “He said he’d been involved in campaigns in 37 states by the time he got to Bush,” says Dave McNeeley, a former political columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether that was literally true seemed less important than the ties Allbaugh claimed to Bush’s father, who in 1992 appointed him to something called the Arkansas-Oklahoma Arkansas River board. George W.’s father had an eye for problems that might sneak up on his kids-and for identifying people who could help make the problems go away. (The elder Bush’s office did not reply to a request for an interview.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In newspaper articles, Allbaugh explained his role in the Bush gubernatorial campaign as making sure the trains ran on time, and mediating the strong personalities of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. To Bush’s Brain and Bush’s Mouth was added Bush’s Muscle. At 6-foot-3 and 275 pounds, Allbaugh was an intimidating presence. Some would later liken him to the blockish Sergeant Schultz on the classic TV show Hogan’s Heroes, who used to utter, “I see nuuussing,” while surrounded by mischief.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was clear he wanted to use his size to project a strong or menacing sense of himself,” says Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. Indeed, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Allbaugh’s propensity to turn bright red when enraged led Bush to give Allbaugh the nickname “Pinky.” But if anyone other than W. dared to call him by that name, Allbaugh would whirl around and growl, “I will pinch your head off,” a</span>nd make pinching motions with his fingers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His loyalty to Bush, a man who prizes that quality above all others in his subordinates, was unquestioned. “There isn’t anything more important than protecting him and the first lady,” Allbaugh once told the Washington Post from the governor’s office. “I’m the heavy, in the literal sense of the word.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ironically, the other heavy was a small, refined woman by the name of Harriet Miers</span>, hired, as was Allbaugh, by the tough Dallas lawyer Jim Francis, then Bush’s campaign chairman and a longtime friend of Bush’s father. As general counsel, Miers was in charge of fending off legal problems that threatened Bush with adverse publicity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1999, Allbaugh left the governor’s office to take over the daily management of Bush’s presidential campaign. He headed up a staff of 180, controlled spending, and spoke with Bush several times a day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One potential problem facing the campaign was the rumor that Bush’s father had pulled strings to get his candidate son out of Vietnam service and into a safe <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Texas Air National Guard </span>unit in 1968. There were even reports that Bush went AWOL long before his compulsory flying days were up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The key players in keeping the lid on the National Guard story were Allbaugh and Miers. In 2004, a year before Bush nominated Miers for the Supreme Court, Allbaugh told The New York Times, “She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played.” Assigned to “investigate” Bush’s Guard service, Miers gave the governor a clean bill of health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As part of his job, Allbaugh communicated directly with Adjutant General Daniel James III, the head of the Texas National Guard (later appointed by President George W. Bush to run the federal Air National Guard)</span>. What remains unclear is whether he ordered James to dispose of any old Bush military files that might prove embarrassing, an order former <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett,</span> head of a Guard efficiency task force, claims to have heard Allbaugh issue in a conversation on James’s speakerphone. Whatever was or was not done, the unexplained gaps in Bush’s National Guard service never became a central topic in the 2000 election. With his “iron triangle” of Rove on strategy, Hughes on P.R., and Allbaugh as the enforcer (plus an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court), Bush triumphed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the unsinkable Michael Brown rebounded once again, this time from his firing at IAHA. Just as the politics-tinged Horse Association job in Colorado appeared when Brown faced career and financial problems in Enid, Oklahoma (and the Stephens job fell into Allbaugh’s lap when his financial difficulties mounted), Brown would be fortuitously safety-netted again, this time with a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">near-instantaneous hiring by an anti-union electrical contractors’ association that later won warm praise from President Bush.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Another constant in Brown’s bumpy career has been timely assists from his self-described “longtime friend and family attorney,” Andrew Lester. A prep-school contemporary of George W.’s brother Marvin, Lester pops up at crucial points in Brown’s life like a fairy godmother.</span> When Brown lost an early legal job, Lester brought him in for a brief stint as his law partner. When horse-association problems engulfed Brown, Lester rushed to his defense. And on September 27, 2005, at a House select committee hearing investigating the Katrina blunders, there was the pin-striped Lester conspicuously whispering legal advice in Brown’s ear. Lester, who represented the Oklahoma Republican Party in a 2002 reapportionment battle, worked for a Bush-family-connected oil services firm when he was younger, has been a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">close friend of Justice Clarence Thomas and regional director for the secretive Federalist Society (new Chief Justice John Roberts denied being a member until his name turned up on a list); he was also short-listed for a federal judgeship under George W. Bush.</span> To this day, Lester insists his support is merely a factor of friendship, and maintains that Brown was eminently qualified for FEMA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CHOOSING FEMA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Bush’s Texas team headed for Washington, it was clear that Joe Allbaugh had neither the experience nor the sophistication to serve as the White House chief of staff, the position he coveted. That job went to Andy Card, who had served in the senior Bush’s administration. CNN quoted a “source close to the transition team” who predicted that Allbaugh would become one of two deputy chiefs of staff. Instead, he landed at FEMA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why there? Theories abound. Some speculate that Allbaugh wanted to stay in the White House but that Rove wanted the brusque enforcer out of his way. Some of Allbaugh’s friends say he had grown tired of being at Bush’s beck and call and wanted to “do his own thing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If it was a fiefdom he was after, FEMA would do nicely. Allbaugh had enjoyed being the governor’s interface with emergency agencies during minor crises in Texas</span>. At FEMA, he would have more than 8,000 employees and a $4 billion budget to play with. The selection was made, and Allbaugh, having failed to reveal his bankruptcy, his lawsuits, and the general messiness of his life up to that point, was<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> confirmed by the Senate with minimal scrutiny</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From its inception under Jimmy Carter, FEMA had traditionally been patronage territory</span>. George H.W. Bush appointed Wallace Stickney, a former next door neighbor of Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu, who had headed New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation and been an EPA engineer<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Stickney presided over FEMA’s inept handling of Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew during the first and last years of the elder Bush’s term, events that many political observers believe contributed to Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Clinton introduced reforms at FEMA and appointed his former head of disaster management in Arkansas,<b> James Lee Witt, as director </b>(which was elevated to a cabinet-level position.) Witt communicated confidence in his agency, its role, and its personnel, and FEMA morale soared. Republican Senator Ted Stevens sought to keep Witt on indefinitely, drafting legislation to make the FEMA directorship a longer-term, fixed position. Even George W. Bush praised Witt, leading many to hope that Bush might keep him on. But the candy store was simply too big to leave to a holdover from the hated Clinton administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Allbaugh took over, Witt introduced him around the offices. He went out of his way to praise the staff of the 8th-floor, which contained the front office, congressional affairs, and other key sections. “Apparently, that was the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">kiss of death,</span>” says a former official who worked on that floor. “From then on, we were not to be trusted.” The new boss made it clear from the day he arrived that he had little regard for many of his underlings. “Joe Allbaugh didn’t trust many people,” says Trey Reid, a former senior FEMA official. “He was very insular, and had a tight circle.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The first person Allbaugh brought into that circle was Michael Brown, who, as general counsel, presided over a legal staff of 30.</span> Allbaugh insisted there was no one better suited than Brown. “I hired him solely on his ability as a strong <b>ethics attorney,</b>” Allbaugh said in an official FEMA press release at the time. “He is very experienced, knowledgeable, and professional and will be a great asset to the agency and to myself.” With emphasis (as would soon be clear) on “myself.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The front office was Allbaugh’s bunker. Abandoning a tradition of using civil-service professionals for certain vital posts, he quickly staffed up with loyalists. These included Deputy Director Patrick Rhode, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Douglas, and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler, all political operatives with no professional experience in emergency disaster management.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Holdovers from Witt’s tenure, meanwhile, mistrusted Allbaugh in turn, and in some cases even withheld information he’d requested. “In one meeting, Joe made it clear he would have fired everyone if he had his way,</span>” recalls Reid. “If the elevator doors opened [with Allbaugh inside], employees wouldn’t get on. They were afraid of him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One senior staffer who did get on an elevator with the hulking Allbaugh made the mistake of complimenting his boss on his fine performance on Meet the Press that weekend. “Why would you care?” Allbaugh snapped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Allbaugh soon embarked on a Nixonian purge. Acting upon his orders, a reluctant inspector general launched a series of internal investigations, looking at everything undertaken by the Witt administration, including Witt’s own travel expenses. Nothing of note was found, and on several occasions the I.G. proclaimed his job done, only to be told to keep looking. Allbaugh launched his longest investigation into a headdress that used to hang on James Lee Witt’s wall, a token of appreciation from a Native American tribe in recognition of his efforts following the Oklahoma City bombing. Someone said it might contain feathers from the protected bald eagle-a federal offense-but the probe, which even involved the F.B.I., fizzled when they turned out to be dyed chicken feathers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With little understanding of or experience with large-scale disasters and little patience with federal bureaucracies, Allbaugh was happy to go along with the administration’s view of FEMA as a bloated entitlement program in need of drastic cutbacks. “His position was that the states ought to take a bigger role,” says Reid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Flood mitigation, a high priority under Witt, received short shrift under Allbaugh. The chief of mitigation, Anthony Lowe, was replaced with a veteran of the insurance industry</span>. Steve Kanstoroom, an independent fraud-detection and pattern-recognition expert with 22 years’ experience, found that <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">FEMA was allowing insurance adjusters to use software that set artificially low settlement amounts for flood victims, and that the claims-assessment process was deeply compromised by involvement from insurance-industry figures.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At FEMA, as throughout the administration, the foxes had taken over the henhouse and were partying up. Out the door, one by one, went the experienced disaster-relief managers, and in came the political opportunists and the industry lobbyists. </span>“Many of their skilled management team has left,” says Kanstoroom. “You’ve got a train running down the tracks with nobody driving it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In retrospect, Allbaugh’s most damaging accomplishment at FEMA was pre-positioning Michael Brown as his successor. Allbaugh included him in all key deliberations, even naming him Chief Operating Officer, and Brown’s influence was apparent to all. </span>Within six months of Brown’s arrival as general counsel of FEMA, Allbaugh was ready to promote him. First, though, he had to oust his current acting deputy director, John Magaw-a former director of the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whom Clinton had placed in charge of coordinating domestic-terrorism efforts for FEMA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“One day, Mr. Allbaugh came in and said, ‘I know you’ve got these other things to do. I’m going to ask Mr. Brown to be deputy,” recalls Magaw, who promptly returned to the domestic-terror position assigned him by Clinton. The timing was remarkable. Just a week prior to September 11, 2001, Allbaugh removed one of the most experienced men in government and replaced him with one of the least experienced.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In December, with the country focused on terrorism and on preventing any more attacks, Magaw left FEMA altogether, at the White House’s request, to help start the Transportation Security Administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But before Brown could take over permanently as deputy director, he had to face the Senate. In June 2002, he presented a résumé that was riddled with exaggerations about his experience and serious omissions about his financial and legal problems. One question on the disclosure form asks, “Do you know why you were chosen for this nomination by the President?” In a meandering written response, he wrote, in part: “I hope the President has nominated me for the position of Deputy Director based on my commitment to the agency and my ability to work closely with the Director.” <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Brown was confirmed in a cakewalk.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet structural change at the agency was imminent. In the aftermath of 9/11, with the public clamoring for coordinated anti-terror responses, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">it was evident that FEMA could not remain independent. Bush, having initially opposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, eventually caved to Congressional demands, and Joe Allbaugh began to look for his exit strategy. The moment Homeland Security swallowed FEMA, Allbaugh departed for the private sector, leaving Brown in charge.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Initially, FEMA staffers greeted Allbaugh’s hand-picked successor with a sigh of relief. Brown was as outgoing as Allbaugh was introverted, as charming as Allbaugh was gruff. On first meeting, people came away feeling like they’d known him for a long time. “I was pretty impressed with him,” says Trey Reid. “He was articulate, bright, a quick study. I didn’t have to spend much time going over things with him.” On the personality front, Brown was a vast improvement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In terms of disaster-management, there were two eventualities FEMA lifers always worried about: a really big California earthquake, and levee breaks in New Orleans</span>. But worrying and fixing were two different things<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Brown, on the advice of aides, asked for more money for levees and catastrophic planning, but neither Congress nor the White House would bite.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Allbaugh had been disinclined to press Bush for strong remedial action, Brown lacked even the option. He didn’t really have a relationship with the president, his diminutive nickname notwithstanding, and the Department of Homeland Security was focused almost exclusively on terrorism. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I don’t think any of the budget requests we submitted went through,” says Reid. “Everything went for terrorism.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With the defections of several senior managers and the firing of others, compounded by the denial or reduction of budget requests, FEMA’s staff was left paper thin. “At this point, there’s only one person in the building who knows how to do certain things,” says Reid. “If that person gets sick or dies, you’re shit out of luck.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite all the cuts, however, there was always money for political purposes. Ever mindful of avoiding his father’s mistakes-among them the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">disastrous handling of Hurricane Andrew in 1992-Bush was not about to lose to John Kerry over disaster relief. Under Brown, the response to a series of hurricanes that battered Florida during the 2004 presidential campaign was as choreographed as Bush’s landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln the previous year. Agency staffers were everywhere, in FEMA T-shirts, and Brown was especially visible. An investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel later found that FEMA had handed out tens of millions of dollars following Hurricane Frances to residents and businesses in the Miami-Dade county area, where no deaths and only mild damage occurred, while providing much less assistance to areas that were harder hit but less politically crucial.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By August 2005, Brown was already rumored to be preparing his own exit into the private sector. And just as Allbaugh had a reliable understudy in Brown, Brown readied his own, elevating <b>Patrick Rhode,</b> a former Bush campaign advance man who had become his chief of staff, to deputy director. While Rhode lacked experience in emergency management, his public-relations and media skills had been sharpened as a <b>former television news anchor</b> and reporter. Perhaps they’d been sharpened a bit much: It was Rhode who, several days into the Katrina disaster, would call FEMA’s performance “one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country’s history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CASHING IN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If being ostensibly “anti-government” while playing a leading role in government is tricky, it all pays off on the back end. Nobody knows that better than Allbaugh, whom Newsweek recently described as having “the hide of a rhino” when it comes to criticism of conflicts of interest. Once he left FEMA, he moved quickly to make up for years of privation in the public sector, forming the Allbaugh Company with his wife, Diane, an attorney.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Diane Allbaugh had begun laying the groundwork from the moment they arrived in Washington, D.C., repeating a pattern she’d established in Texas. In the summer of 1996, just a year after moving to the Lone Star State, Diane had signed on as a lobbyist with a number of large corporate clients, mostly energy firms, with pressing business before the state, while her husband held a highly visible position as the governor’s top aide. When the newspapers reported the story, Governor Bush’s office hastened to announce new rules, and Diane declared an end to her lobbying career. However, she was soon ensconced in a ‘non-lobbying’ position with a law firm representing some of the same companies. Now, in Washington, she jumped into the K Street fray, becoming “of counsel” to Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which Fortune magazine described at the time as the country’s most powerful lobbying firm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <b>shop’s founder, Haley Barbour</b>, who would figure prominently in the Allbaughs’ improving financial prospects, was the very definition of a self-dealer<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. After founding the firm, he stayed involved with it while playing a key role in the privatization of government services as chairman of the Republican National Committee during Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” revolution, then served as chairman of Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign advisory committee. He left the company in 2003 to mount a successful run for governor of Mississippi-where he ended up on television talking about how his citizens were suffering from Katrina. No one thought to point out how the Allbaugh-Brown-Barbour model of disaster management had set the stage for the calamity.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cynic (or a realist) might formulate that <b>model like this: Why spend resources to prevent disasters, when there’s so much money to be made cleaning up after them?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Consider the trajectory of <b>Shaw Group, </b>a Baton Rouge engineering and construction firm, and one of Allbaugh’s biggest clients. </span>On August 15, 2005, with hurricane season getting under way, Joe and Diane’s firm, Allbaugh Co., registered as a lobbyist for Shaw, which began advertising for workers to man its rebuilding projects before Katrina even struck. After the levees broke, Shaw, which had not been a FEMA contractor during the Clinton years, received two separate $100 million federal clean-up contracts and saw its stock price shoot up 50 percent in a few weeks. (After Brown departed FEMA, the agency announced that it would<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> re-bid some contracts</span> that were given on a non-competitive basis, including Shaw’s.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless, when the D.C. newspaper The Hill asked about the remarkable good fortune of Allbaugh’s clients, his spokesperson, Patti Giglio, replied, “The first thing he says when he sits down with a client is, ‘Don’t hire me if you’re looking for a government contract.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maybe that’s why<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b> AshBritt </b>Inc., didn’t hire Allbaugh. Instead, the Florida-based environmental services firm hired Barbour Griffith-and was selected by the Army Corps of Engineers to help lead the Katrina clean-up effort.</span> The contract, worth <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">$568 million, was signed before the hurricane hit.</span> Interestingly, back in 2002, when an ice storm hit Allbaugh’s native Kay County, Oklahoma, Allbaugh arranged a conference call with county officials, who ended up choosing the Florida-based AshBritt over other firms with much lower competing bids. (AshBritt has been much in the news in recent weeks, with a plethora of pointed local articles raising questions about the company’s operations, its candor, and its spectacular growth during the Bush years – all through its<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> lucrative contracts to subcontract to other firms that do most of the actual clean-up work.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AshBritt’s president, Randal R. Perkins, said in an interview that he did not recall the 2002 conference call, and noted that his firm doesn’t deal directly with FEMA. “FEMA doesn’t contract directly, they just pay the bills,” he said. As for Allbaugh, Perkins said, “I know him, but I wouldn’t say that we are friends.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh’s web of self-interest ranges from disasters to energy to real estate. And the self-serving links involve not just him, his wife, Brown, and Barbour but also the vice president and the president. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Haley Barbour advised the Bush-Cheney campaign on strategy in 2000 while Joe Allbaugh was campaign manager. During the transition, Allbaugh vetted Cheney’s qualifications to be vice president.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the election, Allbaugh served on Cheney’s secretive energy task force while his wife was “of counsel” at the Barbour firm and being paid as a “consultant” by Reliant Energy, Entergy, and Texas Utilities Co. Diane Allbaugh says she did no lobbying. But Barbour, on behalf of an electricity-producing client,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> successfully pushed Cheney’s task force to recommend that the new administration renege on a campaign promise to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Bush, citing the task-force findings, complied.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Allbaughs and Cheneys are literally so at home with each other that, on first arriving in Washington in 2001, the Allbaughs bought Cheney’s townhouse in McLean, Virginia, for $690,000. During the house tour, Cheney must have pointed out the revolving doors. One of Allbaugh’s biggest clients is Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, whose Kellogg, Brown and Root subsidiary got at least $61 million worth of Katrina business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Allbaugh left FEMA he did not, however, restrict himself to the domestic disaster business. Instead, he cast a wider net into the entire Homeland Security/Defense sector, thereby stressing his implied connections in the Department of Homeland Security, which had absorbed FEMA, and in the Pentagon and White House. His departure from government, in March, 2003, took place precisely as the invasion of Iraq unfolded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh formed, with Barbour Griffith and numerous ex-officials of the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, a company called New Bridge Strategies. It moved to secure contracts in Iraq the moment hostilities commenced. He also formed Blackwell-Fairbanks, a joint venture with Andrew Lundquist, with whom he had served on vice president Cheney’s secretive energy task force. (The<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> name of the company is based on the hometowns of the two principals</span>.) Clients in 2004 included the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin; on required forms, Blackwell-Fairbanks would later report that it had lobbied both the offices of the president and of the vice president. Filings for Joe and Diane Allbaugh’s The Allbaugh Company show among its clients<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Oshkosh Truck, the leading supplier of vehicles to the Pentagon.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now-Governor Barbour, who in early September dismissed criticism of the federal Katrina response as “all cooked up by the news media and a few enemies of George Bush,” declined a RealNews interview request.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MURKY WATERS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We may expect revelations in coming months and years about the process through which FEMA awarded contracts. But it is likely that even the most cursory examination will uncover high-level decisions that carried little obvious public benefit. One such example might be the agency’s abrupt 2003 decision to award an exclusive contract for water supplies in emergencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to the Allbaugh-Brown reign, FEMA had handed out water contracts to a variety of companies. One of the recipients, not surprisingly, was <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nestle </span>Waters North America, easily the continent’s biggest producer, with 15 brands of bottled water and 23 bottling facilities in the U.S. and Canada.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, without explanation, FEMA went sole-source, picking a little-known, family-run firm called Lipsey Mountain Water. The company, based in Norcross, Georgia, had just 15 full-time employees, no production capacity and no distribution network. Instead, it was aggressively soliciting other companies to supply its needs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The father and son came in and said, ‘We want you to sell us water,’” recalls Kim Jeffery, president and C.E.O. of Nestle Waters North America. “I said, ‘Why would I do that? I have a contract with FEMA.’ He said, ‘Because we have the contract now.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lipsey trumpeted a <b>sophisticated computer system that would supposedly ensure speedy water deliveries and justify its exclusive five-year contract.</b> But the system did not work so well during the recent crisis, according to some in the industry. Joe Doss, president of the trade group for water suppliers, says his members were besieged with reports of delays in water deliveries after the hurricane, and that within one 24-hour period they voluntarily trucked in 1.5 million bottles. (And again, when Hurricane Wilma swept through Florida in late October, distribution sites turned people away without water days after the event.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lipsey Mountain Water may be new to the world of federal water contracts, but its principals are not new to politics. The Lipseys are part of a politically connected family that gives regularly to both political parties and owns one of the country’s largest gun wholesalers. The gun lobby is still the nation’s most powerful, as acknowledged by Dick <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cheney, who addressed the National Rifle Association’s 2004 annual meeting and noted from the podium: “I’m…delighted to see my good friend, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh. Joe is here this evening. It’s always good to have a firearm if you get into real trouble-but the next best thing is Joe Allbaugh.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November, the Pentagon confirmed tha<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">t its inspector general was investigating Lipsey in response to complaints received by Congress from truck drivers, trucking brokers and ice producers who did much of the actual work under Lipsey’s contract and say Lipsey has not paid their bills or even answered their phone calls</span>. (Company president Joe Lipsey III did not respond to a list of questions he had requested from RealNews.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only through the painstaking unraveling of connections like these are we likely to grasp the truth about the secretive conflicts of interest that waste billions of public dollars and undermine the country’s readiness to respond to natural and man-made disasters.. Such inquiries are not welcome, of course. Instead, we are all supposed to play Sgt. Schultz, and “see nuuussing.” The Administration’s motto might easily be “Nothing to see here, folks, move along quickly, please.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, when a National Public Radio interviewer posed questions about the handling of the storm to Vice Admiral Thad Allen, whom President Bush had assigned to take over the Katrina response from Michael Brown, Allen said that there was no point in dwelling on the past. “I would say that the longer the discourse continues about what might or might not have happened and the political issues surrounding that-I think at some point it starts to devalue the work of a whole lot of FEMA workers out there that are working very, very hard for the American public.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet no one devalued the work of the rank and file of FEMA workers more than the Joe Allbaugh, Michael Brown, and their boss. And the discourse the administration wished to avoid was, and is, urgently needed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, FEMA’s front line troops struggle with the legacy of Katrina, overwhelming challenges and devastated morale. Meanwhile, Joe Allbaugh travels the world, soliciting business, and even the disgraced Brown has announced his move into the consulting business. President Bush has thus far not had to explain anything – and the White House has declined to turn over to Congress key documents about Hurricane Katrina or to make senior officials available for sworn testimony.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">URL to article: http://whowhatwhy.com/2006/06/14/unholy-trinity-katrina-allbaugh-and-brown/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr" style="direction: ltr; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>R. David Paulison</b>, of Florida, was&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060406-5.html" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">nominated</a>&nbsp;April 6, 2006, by President&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">George W. Bush</a>&nbsp;to be Under Secretary for Federal Emergency Management at the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Department_of_Homeland_Security" title="Department of Homeland Security" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Department of Homeland Security</a>. This position was previously titled Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response. Paulison replaces&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_D.Brown" title="Michael D. Brown" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Michael D. Brown</a>, who&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/09/12/embattled_fema_director_mike_brown_resigns/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">resigned</a>&nbsp;September 12, 2005, "'in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president,' three days after losing his onsite command of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina" title="Hurricane Katrina" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Hurricane Katrina</a>&nbsp;relief effort."&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060406-11.html" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">[1]</a></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to the April 6, 2006, White House&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060406-5.html" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">news release</a>, Paulison "currently serves as Acting Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to this, he served as Administrator of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=United_States_Fire_Administration&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="United States Fire Administration (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(165, 88, 88); background: none;">United States Fire Administration</a>. During this time, he was also Director for Preparedness within the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Federal_Emergency_Management_Agency" title="Federal Emergency Management Agency" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Federal Emergency Management Agency</a>. He previously served as Fire Chief for the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, where he began his career as a rescue fire-fighter in 1971. Mr. Paulison received his bachelor's degree from Florida Atlantic University."</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On September 12, 2005, Paulison was&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050912-1.html" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">appointed</a>&nbsp;by President Bush as the FEMA's Acting Director. Paulison was then FEMA's U.S. Fire Administrator, "a top agency official with three decades of firefighting experience."&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/bush_administration" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">[2]</a></p><h2 style="color: black; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); font-family: 'Linux Libertine', Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id=".22Duct_Tape.22_Man">"Duct Tape" Man</span></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"In another gesture symbolizing the continued confusion of the federal response, the man President Bush immediately named to succeed 'Brownie,' proves to have been the same FEMA official who, two-and-a-half years ago, suggested that Americans stock up on duct tape to protect against a biological or chemical&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Terrorist" title="Terrorist" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">terrorist</a>&nbsp;attack,"&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Keith_Olbermann" title="Keith Olbermann" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Keith Olbermann</a>&nbsp;wrote September 12, 2005. "That set off a run on duct tape at stores, and widespread criticism of the administration. It might have been the first time after&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/9/11" title="9/11" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">9/11</a>&nbsp;that a large number of Americans wondered if the government really knew what it was talking about when it came to disaster preparedness."</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Paulison brings an extensive resume to the post," Olbermann wrote. "He ran fire operations for Miami-Dade County in Florida, and was past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. But in light of the response to this hurricane, another comment he made at the time of the Duct Tape announcements rings especially loudly. Paulison said in</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> February, 2003, that in the first 48 to 72 hours of an emergency, many Americans would likely have to look after themselves."</span></p><h2 style="color: black; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); font-family: 'Linux Libertine', Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="Related_SourceWatch_Resources:Hurricane_Katrina:List_of_related_pages">Related SourceWatch Resources:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina:List_of_related_pages" title="Hurricane Katrina: List of related pages" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Hurricane Katrina: List of related pages</a></span></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In particular see:
</p><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20width%3D%225%22%20height%3D%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle%20cx%3D%222.5%22%20cy%3D%229.5%22%20r%3D%222.5%22%20fill%3D%22%2300528c%22%2F%3E%0A%3C%2Fsvg%3E%0A); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_W.Bush:Hurricane_Katrina" title="George W. Bush: Hurricane Katrina" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">George W. Bush: Hurricane Katrina</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina:Crisis_in_New_Orleans" title="Hurricane Katrina: Crisis in New Orleans" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Hurricane Katrina: Crisis in New Orleans</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina:FEMA" title="Hurricane Katrina: FEMA" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Hurricane Katrina: FEMA</a></li></ul><h2 style="color: black; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); font-family: 'Linux Libertine', Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="External_links">External links</span></h2><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20width%3D%225%22%20height%3D%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle%20cx%3D%222.5%22%20cy%3D%229.5%22%20r%3D%222.5%22%20fill%3D%22%2300528c%22%2F%3E%0A%3C%2Fsvg%3E%0A); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Keith Olbermann,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8514671/#050912a" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">"New FEMA boss is 'Duct Tape Man',"</a>&nbsp;<i>Countdown</i>&nbsp;MSNBC, September 12, 2005.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/paulison.shtm" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 51, 102); padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) 100% 50%;">Biography: R. David Paulison, Acting Under Secretary / U.S. Fire Administrator</a>, FEMA website, accessed September 13, 2005.</li></ul></div><div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 5px; margin-top: 1em; clear: both; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Category</a>:&nbsp;<ul style="list-style: none none; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><li style="margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-style: none; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0.25em; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Hurricane_Katrina" title="Category:Hurricane Katrina" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Hurricane Katrina</a></li></ul></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who Is Joe Allbaugh?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2000, at 5:52 PM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wall Street Journal editorial page maintains a regular feature in which it excoriates an obscure-but-powerful member of the Clinton administration under the headline, "Who Is [Unknown Big Shot's Name Here]?" The most famous of these was "Who Is Vince Foster?" which caused Foster much anguish shortly before he committed suicide. (Among the many tragedies of that affair was that Foster took the Journal editorial page seriously.) The Journal's editorialists have also given this treatment to Webb Hubbell and other Clinton appointees, who, it's fair to point out, didn't commit suicide. In a similar spirit of shining the spotlight on dimly lit corridors of power, with the obvious caveat that Chatterbox does not wish anyone to commit suicide, today's column asks: Who Is Joe Allbaugh?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh is George W. Bush's campaign manager. It is often said that the Bush campaign is run by a troika of aides, two of whom--spokeswoman Karen Hughes and strategist Karl Rove--are well known to the public. The third member is the press-shy Allbaugh. Actually, if you want to get complicated, there's also a fourth person, campaign chairman Don Evans, whose role might be likened to that of Charlie in Charlie's Angels. It is widely suspected that if Bush gets elected president, either Evans or Allbaugh will become Bush's chief of staff. In Allbaugh's case, this is vaguely disconcerting, not because of anything bad that's known about Allbaugh, but rather because almost nothing is known about Allbaugh except that he's from Oklahoma, that he has a flat-top haircut, that he rides herd on campaign spending, and that Dubya calls him "Big Country." Allbaugh is famously press-shy and has somehow managed to make it through the entire campaign without having a major magazine or newspaper profile written about him. (The only extensive interviews Allbaugh seems to have given were for local-boy-makes-good pieces by the Associated Press, the Ponca City News, the Daily Oklahoman, and Tulsa World. TheWashington Post's Dan Balz did a serviceable mini-profile, and the Center for Public Integrity has some interesting-but-ambiguous information on Allbaugh's possible role in killing off an investigation of a funeral home whose CEO gave money to Bush père. But that's really about it.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh's low profile came in handy on Oct. 19, when Judy Sarasohn ran a squib in her "Special Interests" column in the Washington Post reporting that Allbaugh's wife Diane had registered with the Senate in September to lobby in Washington on behalf of three Texas-based utilities. Nobody picked the story up. Interestingly, Joe Allbaugh was criticized in the Dallas Morning News four years ago when Diane signed on to lobby for Texas utilities in Austin. At the time, Joe was Bush's executive assistant. Bush pronounced himself "troubled" by the potential conflict of interest, and Diane resigned. This time, though, the Post's questions were deflected peremptorily by a spokesman who said, "She has the highest ethical standards in her practice." Why be less vigilant in Washington than in Austin? It's possible, of course, that Diane isn't being less vigilant. Maybe Joe has made a firm decision not to follow Dubya to Washington if he wins. Maybe Diane doesn't think Bush is going to win. Maybe Diane plans to stop lobbying for her clients in Washington the day after the election if Bush does win. None of these scenarios seems especially likely. A more likely explanation is that Diane's prospective White House connection is too lucrative not to cash in on. (Click here to read a Roll Call story by John Bresnahan about various lobbyists who expect to get rich off a Bush administration.) It would be especially pointless to give up the baksheesh when nobody's kicking up a fuss.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">slate?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Allbaugh, Disaster Pimp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I don't buy the 'revolving door' argument," said Bush's former FEMA chief.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Timothy Noah|Posted Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writing in the Sept. 1 Washington Post, Dan Balz noted that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Joe Allbaugh, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was in Louisiana "helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm." Readers who don't know much about how Washington works probably took this to mean that an admirably selfless Allbaugh was giving generously of his time to help speed the rescue effort. There may, in fact, have been some of that. But Allbaugh is no mere dabbler in "the private-sector response" to government needs. He's a lobbyist and a consultant who's been cashing in on his close ties to President Bush since 2003. Allbaugh, in addition to being Bush's first FEMA chief (Allbaugh's college chum Michael Brown succeeded him), * was Bush's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and campaign manager to Bush during the 2000 election. Now Allbaugh is the man to see if you want a contract in Iraq, or a piece of the action on homeland security, or, apparently, a shot at rebuilding New Orleans. "I don't buy the 'revolving door' argument," Allbaugh told the National Journal last year. "This is America. We all have a right to make a living."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a former administration official, Allbaugh must follow certain rules meant to inhibit influence-peddling. These have never been terribly onerous, and the Bush administration last year made them less so. Federal law prohibits former government officials from ever attempting to influence the government on any matter in which they were directly involved while working for the government; it requires them to wait two years before they attempt to influence the government on any matter that was pending up to a year before their departure from government; and it requires senior personnel like Allbaugh to wait one year before they attempt to influence their former agency. No sweat! Allbaugh has been out of the government for two and a half years, and back when the one- and two-year restrictions still applied, the client always had the option to contact even FEMA through Allbaugh's wife and lobbying partner Diane. Diane Allbaugh had the entrepreneurial vision to set up a lobbying business in Washingtonshortly before her husband's boss was elected president—if you want to get technical,appointed president by the Rehnquist court—in 2000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What, precisely, is the "private-sector response" that Allbaugh has been "coordinating" in New Orleans? Nobody seems to know. (Allbaugh hasn't returned my phone call yet, but I expect he will; he's famously accessible to reporters, which may help explain why his influence-peddling operation has received so little scrutiny.) Looking over the Allbaugh family client list, likely suspects include Kellog, Brown and Root (subsidiary to Halliburton), for whom both Allbaughs are lobbying to "[e]ducate the congressional and executive branch on defense,disaster relief [italics mine], and homeland security issues." KBR hasalready been hired to help repair three Navy facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, under a contract that predates its relationship with Allbaugh. Shaw Group International is similarly employing Allbaugh to "educate" the government on disaster relief—we should start calling the former FEMA chief "professor"!—and therefore seems another likely beneficiary of Allbaugh's mission to Louisiana. But that's just guesswork. No doubt Allbaugh is scaring up new clients even as I write.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his early days as FEMA administrator, Allbaugh worried that the agency's mission had "evolved into … an oversized entitlement program." Now it's Allbaugh himself who's suckling from FEMA's teat. Not to worry, though: It's all in the name of stimulating the private sector. And also—I almost forgot—rebuilding New Orleans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Update, Sept. 10: Allbaugh never returned my phone call. He told both the New York Timesand the Washington Post that he does not secure government contracts for his clients. "A lot of people want to connect the dots, but the dots don't exist," Allbaugh told the Timestoday. "I don't do federal contracts, end of story." So what does he do? "I tell them how to best craft their pitch, to craft their technical expertise so everybody knows exactly what they do," he told the Post. That's right: KBR, which has been in the government-contracting business for a century, doesn't know how to pitch its services to government officials!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times story went on to point out that Shaw (which is, as I suspected, one of the companies for whom Allbaugh is working in Louisiana) has Allbaugh advising it on how to "match the company's efforts to those of the government agencies it serves." It's my understanding that when private companies undertake costly plans to "serve" the government, they're usually paid for their troubles. Allbaugh further told both the Post and the Times that he advised a water-filtration client called UltraStrip Systems, Inc. that it should come down to Louisiana. Presumably it wasn't to sample the jambalaya at Galatoire's. &nbsp;That Allbaugh draws the line at marching into FEMA, contract in hand, and pushing it before the nose of a former employee does not mean that his former stewardship of the agency and his close relationship to President Bush aren't felt when his clients show up in Washington.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I should note, in the interest of bipartisanship, that James Lee Witt, who was director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, is also a lobbyist, and is also working on behalf of corporate clients in Louisiana. A significant difference, though, is that Witt no longer has much political influence to sell, so he has to fall back on actual expertise in disaster recovery. (FEMA was afamously well-run agency &nbsp;under his management.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Correction, Oct. 3, 2005:An earlier version of this column, repeating an error in theBoston Herald, identified Michael Brown as Allbaugh's college roommate. Brown and Allbaugh were friends in college, but not roommates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>BAROWKA & BONURA ENGINEERS & CONSULTANTS<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-431</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>BP AMERICA INC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-1000785</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>BP SHIPPING USA<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-12</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>CROSS TELEPHONE COMPANY<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-90</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>CURRENT COMMUNICATIONS GROUP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-176</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>DAEWOO ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION CO<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-152</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>DILLARD UNIV<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-342</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>ECO ADS INTL<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-277</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>ECOSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES INC (FORMERLY ULTRASTRIP SYSTEMS INC)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-292</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>J&R ENGINEERING<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-378</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>KELLOGG BROWN & ROOT SERVICES INC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-253</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>MLU SERVICES<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-238</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>NATL MINING ASSN<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-51</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>NORTHROP GRUMAN CORP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-315</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>OSHKOSH TRUCK CORP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-137</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>POLYCOM<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-113</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>RIVER BIRCH INC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-393</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>SHAW GROUP ENVIRONMENTAL<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-330</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>TRADEWINDS ENVIRONMENTAL & RESTORATION anthrax?<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-214</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>TRUEPOSITION<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-191</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>UNIFIED RECOVERY GROUP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-416</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>UNION PACIFIC CORP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-36</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gray line</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE ALLBAUGH COMPANY, LLC<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>VECO CORP<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>87313-75</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmmn:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Building a new Iraq in the Chalabi Vision</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perception Management: New Bridge Strategies, LLC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">inside the underbelly with Ahmed Chalabi and John Rendon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Having close ties to Dick Cheney, Ahmed Chalabi, also ethically tone deaf, is our man in Baghdad working out the details of who gets what and when. Ahmed has settled in to the task at hand with passion, and the full faith and credit of the Bush Administraton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chilling With the WHIG: White House Iraq Group and AIPAC are perfect partners for Chalabi. Ahmad Chalabi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in conference with Joe Allbaugh, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ahmad Chalabi freedom fighter&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ahmad Chalabi in perception management conference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The close friend of Dick Cheney has made over one of Saddam's Palaces as his own. Petit Pale Chalabi is lush with decor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A man of sophisticated tastes, Ahmed Chalabi has brought in feng shui (gay eye) metrosexual decorators from New York thanks to The Rendon Group and New Bridge Strategies, LLC, Douglas Feith has arranged all the details...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.scari.org/chalabi.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s Allbaugh Doing For Halliburton?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY FAIZ SHAKIR ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2005 AT 10:06 AM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The AP reports that Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that came under fire for its reconstruction work in Iraq, “has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities that were battered by Hurricane Katrina.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under fire for mistreatment of whistleblowers and under investigation in Nigeria, France, and the U.S. for allegedly paying kickbacks and performing a variety of other corporate misdeeds, Halliburton’s past performance raises serious concerns about whether they’re the right company to help pull the Gulf Coast out of what may end up being the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The appropriation of hurricane recovery funds also highlights Halliburton’s special interest connections to the White House. On February 1, 2005, The Allbaugh Company, under the name of M. Diane Allbaugh, registered to lobby for Kellogg, Brown & Root. The lobbying registration form lists Joe M. Allbaugh, former 2000 Bush campaign manager and former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as KBR’s official lobbyist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The purpose of the lobbying agreement between Allbaugh and Halliburton was ostensibly to “Educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root.” Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Senate Appropriations staffers warn business lobbyists are maneuvering to tack on special-interest amendments” to the hurricane supplemental spending bill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was Allbaugh one of those maneuvering behind the scenes to get Halliburton a piece of the $10.5 billion pie that Congress recently passed for hurricane disaster relief?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If so, it wouldn’t be the first time Allbaugh used his links to Bush to profit off a disaster recovery. On Sept. 29, 2003, the New York Times reported that Allbaugh had set up a consulting firm, New Bridge Strategies, to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeCurrent Communications GroupCurrent Communications Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeGrab Barrier UsrGrab Barrier Usr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeManhole Barrier Security SystemsManhole Barrier Security Systems</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeTrade-Winds Environmental & RestorationWindswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeCurrent Communications GroupCurrent Communications Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeTrade-Winds Environmental & RestorationWindswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy CorpEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeBroadwaveUSA IncNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeGrab Barrier UsrGrab Barrier Usr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy CorpEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeBroadwaveUSA IncNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeTrade-Winds Environmental & RestorationWindswept Environmental Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeManhole Barrier Security SystemsManhole Barrier Security Systems</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeTXU CorpTXU Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002$0.00Allbaugh, M DianeNorthpoint TechnologyNorthpoint Technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeTXU CorpTXU Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeReliant EnergyReliant Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001$20,000.00Allbaugh, M DianeEntergy OperationsEntergy Corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) NYSE: SAI is a FORTUNE 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company headquartered in the United States with numerous federal, state, and private sector clients. It works extensively with the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Intelligence Community, including the National Security Agency, as well as other U.S. Government civil agencies and selected commercial markets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SAIC Inc<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$60,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant Energy<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reliant Energy<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TXU Corp<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$20,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lexis-Nexis<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$0</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most Frequently Disclosed Lobbying Issues</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Radio & TV Broadcasting,Utilities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View all lobbying data for Allbaugh, M Diane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div>