Senator Barack Obama has addressed Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about his ties to Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko, but it continues to haunt him—this even after he donated any campaign funds from Rezko back to charities.
After another review of campaign contributions, an aide to Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday evening that the campaign was giving to charity $72,650 in donations tied to an indicted Chicago businessman, Antoin Rezko, who helped raise money for Mr. Obama’s Senate campaign four years ago.
Obama angrily rejected Clinton’s accusation at Monday’s Democratic debate. And a Tribune review of land and court documents and law firm files as well as correspondence and other records related to Obama’s eight years as an Illinois state lawmaker supports his contention that he did not directly represent Rezko’s development firm. Instead, the records show, he represented non-profit community groups that partnered with Rezko’s firm.
But is Obama’s explanation on the up and up?
Beyond the heated sound bites is a story of a more complex relationship that long boosted Obama’s political fortunes but now could prove a campaign liability.
For years after Rezko befriended Obama in the early 1990s, he helped bankroll the politician’s campaigns. Then, after Obama’s election to the U.S. Senate, Rezko engaged him in private financial deals to improve their adjoining South Side properties. Those arrangements became a source of lingering controversy after the Tribune first reported them in November 2006.
Quite likely, Clinton is not going to let it go and if there is truth in it, she shouldn’t. Still, she should be very careful since she has her own questionable campaign contributors.
Hamed Wardak Contribution List in 2008
| Name & Location | Employer/Occupation | Dollar Amount |
Date | Primary/ General |
Contibuted To |
| Wardak, Hamed R MC LEAN, VA 22101 |
Nat’l Construction & Logistics/Pres | $2,300 | 09/30/2007 | P | HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT – Democrat |
Looks innocent enough, I suppose. Yet, just who is this Hamed Wardak? As it happens, journalist Arthur Kent, who has now gone into politics, offered some revelations on this fellow in a piece he’d written some time ago titled Cashing in on Karzai & Co. Following is just a small portion of the article:
If Khalilzad’s concepts of tribalism reveal one Western tendency, it is a passion for promoting Afghan-Americans friendly to the Bush White House. In the 1990’s, a new generation of displaced Afghans, the sons and daughters of diplomats, businessmen – and former guerrilla commanders – took root in their parents’ adopted homeland. It was within this diaspora that Hamed Wardak came of age.A somewhat chubby, intensely studious young man, Hamed was destined to emulate, if not exceed, Zalmay Khalilzad’s gifts for political networking and hyper-drive careerism. Hamed’s father, Rahim Wardak, brought his family to the U.S. from Pakistan. There, in the 1980’s, he had garnered a reputation as one of the least accomplished commanders of the American-backed Mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation forces. By the time of the 1990’s civil war, Rahim Wardak had vanished from the Afghan scene. Gradually, however, Hamed came under the influence of Kirkpatrick’s philosophical soul mates, notably Marin Strmecki, a Republican essayist and political facilitator with the Smith Richardson Foundation. Strmecki worked at the Pentagon under Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, along with Lewis “Scooter” Libby – and Zalmay Khalilzad. It was during Hamed Wardak’s reappraisal of the world, via these American political heavyweights, that he came into contact with a group of upwardly-mobile players on Washington’s Afghan-American scene: the Karzais; specifically, two of the six Karzai boys – Qayum and Mahmood. Unlike their younger brother Hamid, who had spent much of his life in Pakistan, Mahmood and Qayum were accomplished US-based businessmen.In turn, Wardak saw the benefits of aligning himself with the Karzais’ dazzling circle of friends. This paid enormous dividends. By the time war drums sounded in the aftermath of the Sept. 11th terror attacks, Hamed Wardak had toned down his pro-Taliban sympathies and was on his way to becoming vice-president of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, founded by Mahmood Karzai. He also nabbed an advisor’s post with Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. But his real breakthrough was joining a Virginia-based contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, a close friend of Qayum Karzai.Hamed Wardak’s new alliances proved extraordinarily advantageous as George W. Bush launched his “war on terror,” particularly with Khalilzad and Strmecki enjoying direct access to vice-president Dick Cheney’s office. The melding of the Wardaks’ business and political connections had catapulted them into the front ranks of an advancing legion of state-building, doctrine-spouting capitalists. Along with the leading lights of the Afghan-American business community, they returned to their ancestral homeland, which had become a cradle of treasure and influence few Afghans could have dreamed of after the displacement and loss of the Soviet and Taliban eras.
Hamed Wardak could not be located for his response to this story. Azimi says he does not know the whereabouts of his former “Managing Director of International Operations,” and Wardak’s name has been removed from Ti’s website. Wardak reportedly has set up his own company, NCL, in Kabul, along with a foundation called “Sacrificers For Peace,” described as a “multi-ethnic movement” seeking “governmental reform.”The name prompts a wry smile from the source in President Karzai’s office. “The Afghan people know who has made genuine sacrifices – their own families, their villages, their country. Afghans know the meaning of the word sacrifice. And they know too well about those who only pretend to be concerned, while getting rich on foreign aid.”
What this shows is a number of things, but for one, Clinton should be very careful when pointing fingers at connections with the less than ethical campaign donators. Obviously, Wardak wants to win Clinton’s favor for his own ambitions, which is always the concern of these campaign contributions. Often, it’s not about believing in the candidate for the good of the country, but more about owing favors.
It also shows that while the media is having a field day with who snubbed whom and the entertaining politicians’ squabbles, making their own “reality” television programming, there are real concerns that should be brought to the foreground, discussed in earnest, and handled with the intention of keeping democracy alive. I’d recently written about how politics has been nothing more than negative campaigning, which seems to be what keeps people’s interest in politics. How sad that we are willing to forfeit truth for rumors and discussions for sniping. Does Obama have connections with Antoin Rezko? That’s the media’s job to find out. Nevertheless, while they are at it, they should dig deeper and look more closely at all the politician’s financial backers. It may just be enlightening for us voters.
whereIstand Tags
- How should presidential campaigns be funded?
- Do regulations on campaign contributions violate the First Amendment?
Tags: United States