Nothing But Words

Following up on my entry yesterday, another story has surfaced on Libya. A highly paid lobbyist for Libya (which is still on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism) is a former top Bush administration official and is currently involved with the Bush campaign. From Newsweek we have Lobbying for Libya-and Bush:

Randa Fahmy Hudome, who just this month signed a $1.4 million contract to represent the Libyan government, served as a behind-the-scenes “media consultant” helping to prepare this week’s press release praising Bush’s record in promoting “human rights, democracy and self-determination” in the Middle East, a chief organizer of the group told NEWSWEEK.

Walid Phares, who described himself as the academic adviser for the newly created group called Middle Eastern American National Conference, said he had no idea when he worked with Hudome in recent days on the group’s endorsement that she was simultaneously representing Libyan interests in Washington as a recently registered foreign agent.

Until last year, Hudome was a top Bush administration energy official, serving as chief aide on international issues to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. Her new role as Washington representative for the Kaddafi regime has raised eyebrows in Washington’s lobbying community-both because of the lucrative size of her contract and her continued connections with the Bush campaign…

Hudome, who briefed Bush on Arab-American issues during the 2000 election, confirmed to NEWSWEEK she has been serving as an adviser and informal strategist for the Bush campaign this time as well as serving as a sometime surrogate speaker on the president’s behalf before Arab-American audiences.

…Hudome’s role is likely to prove controversial because of Libya’s status as a formally designated sponsor of terrorism-a label it is not likely to lose any time soon following recent evidence that Kaddafi sought to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia just last year.

So how did this story come out? One of the things most folks remember from the VP debate was Cheney inadvertently sending viewers to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org (when factcheck.com was subsequently flooded with traffic, the owners of the domain name redirected it all to the web site of anti-Bush billionaire George Soros). Well, this is take two:

Phares inadvertently sent e-mails meant for Karim, the Bush campaign official, to the wrong e-mail address by typing in GeorgeWBush.org…an anti-Bush site that tries to imitate the look of the official Bush campaign Web site—GeorgeWBush.com—but laces it with material lampooning the president, such as links to spoof organizations like Billionaires for Bush and Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth.