RBO takes an analytical look at David Plouffe’s recent “surprise” visit to Azerbaijan

Too “coincidental” not to cross-post. Get your popcorn and read this.

Plouffe makes a “surprise visit” to Azerbaijan? Not so fast! Take a closer look (Updated 02/11)

As RBO first reported February 9, 2009, David Plouffe, PSBHO’s presidential campaign manager, arrived in Azerbaijan the day before in what was described by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as a “surprise visit“.

Yesterday, February 10, 2009, we learned from Glenn R. Simpson, who reported at the Wall Street Journal that Plouffe was paid approximately $50,000 for his speech, which he plans to donate to “groups that advocate democratization in the turbulent post-Soviet states of the region around the Caspian and Caucasus mountain range.”

Plouffe’s meeting with about about 50 people was closed to the media.

Journalists were told to leave the auditorium at Gerb (Western) University before Plouffe gave a speech on the 2008 U.S. presidential election and “the power of democracy.”

Maybe, however, Plouffe’s speech was similar to this one (52-second sound byte) from “Leadership Lessons from a Presidential Campaign Manager” he gave February 2, 2009, in the Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture at DePauw University:

You can see a brief film clip of Plouffe being assailed by reporters after his speech at the Baku university here. No embed link is available.

Arastun Orujlu, the head of the local Azeri East-West Research Center, “charged that Plouffe’s visit served a specific goal,” the Azernews blog reports. “‘It is impossible that the former head of Barack Obama’s election headquarters has come here all the way from America on a purely personal visit. He has a concrete mission.’ Orujlu believes that Plouffe had arrived to evaluate the views of the Azerbaijani government and to convey them to Washington which, in turn, ‘will be the factors determining US-Azerbaijan relations.’”

We also learned yesterday that his trip to Azerbaijan was arranged by “lobbyists working with a group that has ties to the Azerbaijan government.”

Mr. Plouffe’s appearance in Azerbaijan was arranged by a Washington-based lobbying firm called Bob Lawrence & Associates, according to records and interviews. The company lists Azerbaijan among its clients on its Web site. People with knowledge of the speech said the appearance was arranged by the Lawrence firm through Mr. Plouffe’s agent, the Washington Speakers Bureau. A person answering the phone at the Lawrence firm said no one was available for comment. A spokesman for the Washington Speakers Bureau couldn’t be reached.

At least one Obama supporter is not happy. The Jemal Public Affairs blog commented February 10:

Does anyone believe that one of the brightest political and media strategists on earth was not aware that Washington lobbyists representing the authoritarian, oli-rich country of Azerbaijan had a hand in arranging his puff visit to Baku? Plouffe owes the 13 million subscribers of Obama for America, including yours truly, an apology for betraying the values of the Obama campaign and for inserting himself into a geo-political world where such visits do more damage than good.

Today, February 11, 2009, we are told by the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Anne Derse, that Plouffe’s visit was not a “secret mission”.

“He was just the head of the electoral staff of President Obama. Naturally his visit was coordinated with the US powers but it contained no factors of secret mission,” …

According to Derse, while being in Azerbaijan Plouffe appealed to the population with a request to take an active part in the regulatory processes.

“At the same time, this appeal was aimed at the use of democratic technologies, improvement of the voting process”, noted the ambassador.Returning to our original article, RBO wrote that little alarm bells had gone off at the mention of Azerbaijan and a member of the Obama camp in the same news. The RFE/RL media report states:

The U.S. Embassy in Baku confirmed Plouffe’s trip. Embassy spokesman Terry Davidson told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service that “Plouffe is coming as a private citizen. The embassy is not in charge of his schedule.” [...]

Local media says he was invited by the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan, which is a pro-government NGO and mouthpiece of the president’s office.

The visit comes one month before a controversial referendum in Azerbaijan to lift the ban on presidential terms, making it possible for Aliyev to continue to serve as president.

Through an aide, Plouffe declined RFE/RL’s request for an interview.The only other details found in the RFE/RL article were these:

In its February 6 report, RFE/RL said that February 9 Plouffe was “scheduled to speak at Baku’s Gerb (Western) University”, followed by a meeting with “Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (right) and parliament speaker Oktay Asadov.”

Now, with the new information in Simpson’s WSJ article, some more alarm bells have gone off with the mention of lobbying firm Bob Lawrence & Associates (BL&A).

Let’s take a closer look at this firm. Simpson reports that the “company lists Azerbaijan among its clients on its Web site.”

Checking the lobbyists.info subscription-only database, RBO found that Bob Lawrence & Associates is a registered lobbyist representing Renaissance Associates SA of Baku, Azerbaijan, on matters of defense, foreign relations, fuel/gas/oil, trade (foreign and domestic), and travel/tourism.

The implu Corporation reports that during 2008, BL&A lobbyied on behalf of Renaissance Associates in dealings with Platinum Advisors and Cavarocchi Ruscio Dennis Associates, L.L.C..

That’s the official info. Now we turn to Ken Silverstein, who wrote in September 2007 about both the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan, BL&A and Renaissance Associates, when ACSDA “came on a government propaganda mission to Washington.”

As for the ACDSA, its website reveals that the group’s projects include cheerleader-type programs like “Baku is a Hero City” (which reeks of Soviet nostalgia) as well as more explicitly political ones, such as election monitoring and polling. In a poll conducted a few years ago, according to a 2005 New Republic story, the ACDSA found that “only 5.9 percent of those surveyed voted for opposition candidate Isa Gambar” when he ran against Aliyev. Yet, the story said, “official statistics gave Gambar 12 percent of the vote, and some foreign observers said that he garnered as much as 40 percent.”

Silverstein wrote that BL&A organized the ACDSA visit:

In reality, the whole affair appears to be a government propaganda mission and delegation members are hardly as exalted a bunch [of human rights activists and free advocates] claimed [by BL&A senior associate Patriced Courtney]. Let’s start with Bob Lawrence, which, it turns out, promotes the interests of President Ilham Aliyev but is paid by a cut-out: Renaissance Associates, a pro-government business group based in Baku, the Azeri capital. In 2006, President Ilham Aliyev–who inherited power from his father when the old man died and then got elected in his own right in a rigged vote four years ago–came to Washington for a White House visit. Renaissance advocated for that visit and Bob Lawrence & Associates handled the logistics.

For the October 15, 2008, Azeri elections, ACSDA contracted BL&A, which “assembled 40 prominent Americans, including Congressmen and Congressional staffers, journalists, lawyers and businessmen to observe local polling stations throughout the country.”

It seems that everything old is new again. In 2007 BL&A was paid by Ilham Aliyev via cut-out Renaissance Associates to bring the ACDSA to the US. Then, in October 2008 BL&A was contracted to bring US citizens to Azerbaijan. So, this time, who paid BL&A to bring David Plouffe to Azerbaijan — and for what purpose?

There is another Azerbaijan-BL&A connection of which the significance will soon become clear.

BL&A is also a “Sustaining Member” of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. According to the CoC website, the BL&A client list reportedly includes:

Project development activities are undertaken in both the United States and overseas. The firm works regularly with the Departments of Energy, Transportation, State, Labor, Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, and Defense; the Environmental Protection Agency; the U.S. Congress; and various international entities such as the World Bank, OPIC, the Ex-Im Bank, and a number of embassies.

Hold that thought and let’s continue with RBO’s original article.

Here is what others had to say February 9 about Plouffe and his “surprise visit”:

Ben Smith at The Politico wrote:

David Plouffe, who remains a key, unpaid advisor to Obama for America, is writing a book and hitting the lucrative speaking tour — which is a way that a lucky few can make money on government or campaign work without engaging in the compromises that come with lobbying.

Ken Silverstein at Harper’s Magazine commented:

Barack Obama took office just a few weeks ago and already David Plouffe, his campaign manager, appears to be doing quite well for himself. He’s already signed a lucrative book deal, which seems fair enough, but now he’s flying off to oil-rich Azerbaijan at the invitation of a pro-democracy front group that works closely with the ruling despot.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? We get it. Azerbaijan is “oil-rich”, as Silverstein wrote.

The Azerbaijan government writes regarding its exports:

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC): transports crude oil 1,760 km (1,093 miles) from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. It passes through Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan; Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia; and Ceyhan, a port on the southeastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.”

Bruce Falconer reported July 15, 2008, at Mother Jones on an interview Blackwater founder and CEO Erick Prince granted to the editors and reporters at Military Times. Falconer quoted from an excerpt printed in Army Times:

Do you work for other countries, or just for the U.S.?

We do some training work for other countries, some helicopter support and training and maintenance and that kind of stuff. In Azerbaijan, we were hired by DoD to build for them a naval special warfare capability to defend the oil platforms and interdict weapons and drugs and whatever else in the southern Caspian [Sea]…Falconer adds:

Let’s dig into this a little… The U.S. government has a cozy relationship with Azerbaijan because the central Asian nation borders on the Caspian Sea, which is thought to hold more than 100 billion barrels of oil. Russia and Iran would love to have a piece of it, so the U.S. (joined by every major oil company you can think of) has bolstered ties with an unsavory regime to suit its energy interests. A Blackwater team deployed there in 2004, and like Mr. Prince described, helped train an Azerbaijani martime strike force to protect oil platforms.

Returning to Ben Smith’s post we find:

According to federal records, the Azerbijani government and government-controlled entities, which have major interests in federal energy policy, employ four lobbying firms in Washington, including the high-powered Livingston Group, which is on a $300,000 annual retainer to “maintain contact…with Members of Congress and their staff, Executive branch officians, and non-governmental organizations.”

Anupama Narayanswamy reported October 2, 2008, for the Sunlight Foundation:

With influential lobbyists such as Bob Livingston (right) heading their team, Azerbaijan’s government had access to some of the most powerful people in Washington. For instance, at a meeting with Vice President Richard Cheney, Livingston petitioned to add an attaché from the Department of Commerce to the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan. They have also enlisted Livingston’s aid in organizing the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, working with the United States on building an oil pipeline, and getting oil companies including BP to invest in the region. And they’ve paid well for the service: In the past two years alone the country has spent more than $680,000 in fees and expenses to the Livingston Group.

This brings us to precise the point where those little alarm bells went off when RBO first glimpsed RFE/RL’s article on Plouffe’s “surprise visit” to Azerbaijan.

The mention of Azerbaijan in any political context immediately brings to mind the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. No, this is not your typical tourist-oriented CoC.

As the Sunlight Foundation points out, Robert (Bob) Livingston of The Livingston Group is indeed well-connected with the CoC. In fact, The Livingston Group is listed as a Benefactor and Livingston himself is listed as both an associate member and a member of the board of directors.

Next, checking the members of the CoC’s Honorary Council of Advisors, something — or someone — should jump right out at you. Go ahead. Look below. We’ll wait.

• James Addison Baker III
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Henry Kissinger
• Brent Scowcroft
• John Sununu

Yuppers! It’s Zbigniew Brzezinski (right), former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and former U.S. Presidential emissary to Azerbaijan to help promote the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

ZBig has backed PSBHO since August 2007 and serves as one of his foreign policy advisers.

Now you can see why the Bob Lawrence & Associates connection with the US-Azerbaihan Chamber of Commerce made that second set of alarm bells go off. It adds another layer to the story.

Zbig and the Government-Industry Revolving Door

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair wrote circa 1999 of ZBig and Azerbaijani oil:

U.S. oil companies are slavering over vast oil and gas reserves. A whole host of former government officials are helping the oil companies get a foot in the door in Azerbaijan, including former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Zbig is on the payroll of Amoco, the largest US investor in Azerbaijan’s oil fields, which could produce 3 million barrels per day by 2010.

One of Brzezinski’s tasks for Amoco is to improve the image of Azerbaijan and its president, Geidar Aliyev. This is no easy feat as Aliyev’s regime is guilty of terrible human rights violations. Furthermore, Congress has been much more sympathetic to Armenia, with which Azerbaijan fought a bloody war a few years back.

But Brzezinski has fallen to his task with relish. The New York Times interviewed him last year when it was preparing a major story on Azerbaijan and he told the newspaper that Aliyev is “a real cool cat”. Last July, Brzezinski testified before Congress that Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics had lived under communist rule for seven decades and should not be expected to establish democracies in a short period of time. (Brzezinski expressed far less understanding about the need to transition to democracy after the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime in Nicaragua.)Arthur Lepic, a French journalist and member of the French section of Voltaire Network who specializes in energy and military affairs, concluded his October 22, 2004, article “Zbigniew Brzezinski: the Empire’s Adviser. The outrageous strategy to destroy Russia” with (reposted September 9, 2008, at Dangerous Travels):

In 1989, Brzezinski quit his job at Columbia University where he taught since 1960 to work on Ukraine’s independent status plan. This marks the beginning of his compromise to prevent the resurgence of Russia as a superpower.

Did you catch that? ZBig taught 1960 to 1989 at Columbia University. Barack Hussein Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a degree in political science. Hold that thought.

Lepic continues:

He also developed a “plan for Europe” that included NATO’s expansion to the Baltic republics, a dream that came true when three of them joined NATO in 2002. During the 90s he was the special envoy of the American President to promote the most important oil infrastructure project of the world: the Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan pipeline which was his best opportunity to prevent the resurgence of Russia. He has also been, since 1999, the president of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, whose headquarters are located at the Freedom House facility. This position allows him to intervene in peace negotiations between the Russian government and independence fighters led by Mashkadov. However, the truth behind these good will “democratic” activities is to assist independence followers to maintain a war in the area, like the Afghan one, to weaken Russian and to keep it away from the gains of the Caspian Sea.

[...]

Nowadays, Brzezinski is very active in CSIS but he [is] still the brain of the Democrats foreign policy program, something that is quite evident in candidate Kerry and his partner John Edwards’s obsession with Russia. Following Mark Brzezinski’s advises they chose as their main priority Russia’s nuclear disarmament in a moment in which it has recovered the same oil production it had before its demise and is benefiting widely of the current oil prices which has allowed it to double its defense budget. Therefore, Russia’s nuclear arsenal is not, as John Kerry says, a present-day threat.

Kerry’s real objective is related to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s strategy of Russia’s subordination but, from now on, it will be much more difficult to convince the world public opinion of Russia’s evil and totalitarianism.^Source Therefore, it is necessary to provoke its reaction as was done with the Afghan case in 1979, because Russia will have no problems with its energy supply in the next decades, a real concern the U.S. has. This is why in some recent Wall Street Journal and Novaya Gazetta interviews, Brzezinski characterized Vladimir Putin as “Russian Benito Mussolini”.Where have we heard this US-Russia nuclear disarmament meme before?

Dan Riehl wrote October 15, 2008, on his Riehl World View blog:

This seems a might strange. Obama has sounded mostly silly for trying to use his student travels to Pakistan to speak to his alleged knowledge of foreign affairs. Yet he is said to have penned his senior thesis on Soviet Nuclear disarmament just a few years before the end of the Cold War thanks to Reagan. Why wouldn’t he want to share his great insights with the world?

Anyone want to guess just how far on the wrong side of History Obama was on that one? I’m thinking pretty far if he’s afraid of having it read.

He barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.

MSNBHO reported July 24, 2008:

His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.

“My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States,” Baron said in an e-mail. “At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”Where have we heard this US-Russia nuclear disarmament meme recently?

Now we remember: See RBO’s Nuclear disarmament — Obama “yes”, Pentagon “not so fast”, Congress “skeptical” and John Batchelor’s The Bomb Now, both posted February 2, 2009.

Guess we can connect some of the dots as to the why of it all now, can we not?

Then, in early in 2008, we have ZBig quoted in an article by Anar Veliev, an employee of the TURAN Analytical Information Agency (Azerbaijan):

Azerbaijan occupies a particular place in the U.S.’s plans in this region. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Azerbaijan can be described as the vitally important ‘cork’ controlling access to the ‘bottle’ that contains the riches of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. An independent, Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, with pipelines running from it to the ethnically related and politically supportive Turkey, would prevent Russia from exercising a monopoly on access to the region and would thus also deprive Russia of decisive political leverage over the policies of the new Central Asian states.”

So, now we have Plouffe — a key member of the Obama team — making that “surprise visit” to ZBig’s “cork” in the “bottle” Azerbaijan. No apologies for being suspicious. We must all be — all the time — and remain constantly vigilant.

See updates on next page.  (Note from Uppity: If  you don’t see pages 2 and 3 links here, Click on the title of this post and scroll back down here – and they will show up here–WP hates me)

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