White House Unhappy Over Iraq Support for Obama Timetable

Associated Press

- The White House expressed unhappiness Monday about Iraqi leaders’ public backing for Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal timetable. And it said that Baghdad may be trying to use the U.S. presidential election as leverage in talks about the future of American’s military presence and obligations in the war.

Washington and Baghdad probably will miss a July 31 target for reaching an agreement, said White House press secretary Dana Perino, characterizing the negotiations as “hard-driving.”

“We don’t think that talking about specific negotiating tactics or your negotiating position in the press is the best way to negotiate a deal,” Perino said after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was quoted in a magazine article supporting the 16-month troop withdrawal timeline proposed by Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate. “However, we understand that they’re a sovereign country and they’ll be able to do that,” Perino said. “We’re just not going to do it on our end.”

Al-Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, initially appeared to try to discredit the magazine report but on Monday he expressed hopes that U.S. combat forces could be out of Iraq by 2010, the timeframe proposed by Obama. Buoyed by a sharp reduction in violence, Iraqi leaders have become more assertive about the country’s sovereignty, giving rise to demands for a specific plan for American forces to leave.

The Iraqi statements suggested that Iraqi officials were setting the agenda on the timing of U.S. troop withdrawals and forcing President Bush to make concessions. “Let’s squeeze them,” Al-Maliki was quoted by The Associated Press as telling his advisers. Bush last week reversed course and agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing home more U.S. troops, based on Iraq’s ability to take care of its own security.

“The key issue,” Perino said, “is that they understand it will not be arbitrary; it will not be a date that you just pluck out of thin air; it will not be something that Americans say, `We’re going to do — we’re going to leave at this date,’ which is what some have suggested,” she said.

The White House acknowledged the Iraqis might be trying to use the election for leverage.

“I think that a lot of other people look through the lens of a 2008 presidential election,” Perino said. “Might they be? Sure. I mean, it’s possible.

“Do they have their own political — domestic politics that they need to think about? Sure,” Perino said. “Dare I say that they actually have domestic politics, but they do. And, so all of those things are being taken into account, but I believe that Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker and Prime Minister Maliki’s negotiator are working together in a way that is very serious that they understand the implications.”

She said she could not speculate about specific dates for withdrawals. “Whether or not it’s 16 months, or later, or earlier, I just don’t know.”

Bush to hold news conference

Associated Press

- President Bush is preparing to hold a news conference, his first full-blown meeting with reporters at the White House since April 29.

The news conference Tuesday comes amid troubling developments in Afghanistan, where U.S. deaths have exceeded casualties in Iraq over the last two months. There also is turmoil in the financial markets where the government has been forced to throw a lifeline to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush would open with a statement about steps to help stabilize the housing and financial markets and his lifting of the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. He’ll also call on lawmakers to pass long-stalled spending bills.

Analysis: Bush library corruption charges

SHAUN WATERMAN, UPI

- Homeland Security officials are looking into allegations that a member of the department’s advisory council offered to arrange meetings with senior administration officials in exchange for a large donation to the Bush presidential library.

Stephen Payne, a major GOP fundraiser and international affairs lobbyist, also touted his success in getting an Uzbek opposition leader removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list and issued a U.S. visa.

“This is a horribly unfortunate story,” said Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner. “We are looking into the facts.” She declined to comment further.

Payne was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s subcommittee on “secure borders and open doors” by Secretary Michael Chertoff in August last year.

Last week, he was videotaped by the London Sunday Times offering to arrange meetings for an exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan, including with Vice President Richard Cheney, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“The exact budget I will come up with,” Payne said, “but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library.”

Payne, who believed he was meeting with a representative of former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, ousted in a people power-type revolution three years ago, called the money “not a huge amount but enough to show that they’re serious.”

In fact, he had been set up by the intermediary, Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, known as Eric Dos, a Kazakh politician with whom he had worked before, and was secretly taped by an undercover Sunday Times reporter.

Monday afternoon, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Payne, saying that he would investigate the allegations.

“If true, this report raises serious concerns about the ways in which foreign interests might be secretly influencing our government through large donations to the library,” wrote Waxman.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters “There’s categorically no link between any official business and the Bush library,” stressing that Payne “was never an employee of the White House.”

In a statement, Payne, who has served as a volunteer advance travel planner for White House trips abroad and accompanied Cheney to the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, called the report a “worst-case example of ‘gotcha’ journalism.”

“The (Sunday) Times attempted to entrap me,” he said, denying there was any quid pro quo for the donation.

Payne released a series of e-mail exchanges that followed the meeting, which, he said, “in contrast to the surreptitiously taped conversation … reflect the basis of the more formal discussion and reflect the inquiries made by Mr. Dos to establish a quid pro quo and my consistent responses that there could be no quid pro quo.”

“Anyone that tells you, ‘I can deliver a U.S. government action in exchange for specific funds’ is someone you will soon visit in prison,” he told Dos in one of the e-mails. “That would be bribery in this country.”

“The Sunday Times of London has done an injustice in undertaking a false and malicious expedition to discredit my company and me,” Payne concluded in his statement.

In promotional materials marked “confidential” that he later said were in draft form, Payne touted his work with an Uzbek opposition leader in a section titled “From alleged terrorist to U.S. ally — The transformation of Muhammad Salih.”

Salih, an author and opposition leader who stood unsuccessfully against Uzbek strongman Islom Karimov in the country’s first presidential election in 1990, and afterwards was first jailed, then placed under house arrest, has lived in exile since 1992.

In 1999, he was tried and convicted in absentia by an Uzbek court of involvement in a series of terrorist bombings in the capital, Tashkent. Although some international observers questioned the trial’s fairness, Salih was placed on the U.S. terrorism watch list and an Interpol warrant was issued for his arrest.

According to Payne’s promotional materials, his company, Houston-based Worldwide Strategic Partners Inc., “worked with the White House and the Departments of State and Justice to facilitate the removal … from the terrorist watch list and the waving of the Interpol warrant” for Salih, and helped secure him a visa to visit the United States.

According to the non-profit Texans for Public Justice, Payne was a Bush-Cheney campaign “Pioneer” — supporters who helped raise at least $100,000 — during the 2000 election, and a “Ranger” — bringing in $200,000 or more — during the 2004 campaign.

Democrats leaped on the report as an example of the kind of corrupt practices that brought down former House Speaker Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Matt Angle, of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic political research and analysis group, called Payne “a junior league Jack Abramoff,” a reference to the disgraced GOP lobbyist, jailed for corruption.

“He has built up influence as a major fundraiser for the president,” said Angle of Payne. “It certainly appears as if he is peddling it.”

“You count on the integrity of public officials,” Angle told UPI. “If they are willing to use themselves as props to enrich a lobbyist, as Tom DeLay let himself be used by Abramoff, and as it appears Cheney was willing to be used by Payne … that (integrity) is in question.”

“It really looks like the administration is selling out to the highest bidder,” added Scott Amey, general counsel of the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight. “This case presents the disgusting side of government that we hope only appears in Hollywood. We need an audit of domestic and foreign policies to make sure they are not based on a large campaign or library contributions.”

Rove ignores subpoena, refuses to testify

BEN EVANS, Associated Press

- Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he tried to influence the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of the House subcommittee that called Rove, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove’s claim of immunity was invalid — perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt for refusing to cooperate.

Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he was involved in prosecutors’ decisions to pursue cases against Democratic politicians or in the firing of federal prosecutors two years ago.

He had been scheduled to appear at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday morning. A placard with his name sat in front of an empty chair at the witness table, with a handful of protesters sitting behind it calling for Rove to be arrested.

The House already has voted to hold two of President Bush’s confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired federal prosecutors for political reasons.

The case, involving White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, is now in court. The White House maintains that its staffers’ internal communications are confidential.

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was convicted on corruption charges in 2006. Democrats are investigating whether Rove encouraged the Justice Department to pursue the case.

Rep. Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment resolution

Associated Press

- Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential contender, said Monday he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently has said impeachment was “off the table.”

Kucinich, D-Ohio, read his proposed impeachment language in a floor speech. He contended Bush deceived the nation and violated his oath of office in leading the country into the Iraq war.

Kucinich introduced a resolution last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. That resolution was killed, but only after Republicans initially voted in favor of taking up the measure to force a debate.

Kucinich won 50 percent of the vote in a five-way House Democratic primary in March, beating back critics who said he ignored business at home to travel the country in his quest to be president.

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