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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (224070)	2/1/2002 12:39:17 AM
From: Rollcast...	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

McAuliffe: Bankrupt Donor Hired Me For 'Political Action' Though he insists now that his relationship with bankrupt telecommunications giant Global Crossing was strictly business, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe admitted in 1999 that he once worked for Global CEO Gary Winnick, who, McAuliffe said, hired him to "help him work on deals" because Winnick "was looking for a little political action." After President Clinton's reelection to a second term, the top Clinton fund-raiser began "operating out of an office in downtown Washington that belonged to Mr. Winnick's Pacific Capital Group, a billion-dollar operation based in Beverly Hills," the New York Times reported in Dec. 1999. Winnick had retained Mr. McAuliffe as a "consultant," the paper said. The DNC chief told the Times, "Gary (Winnick) likes the action. He wanted a stable of people around him with great contacts" to "help him work on deals." Though McAuliffe insisted that his work for Global Crossing had nothing to do with politics, in the next breath he told the paper he was hired because, "Winnick was looking for a little political action." The bankrupt ex-billionaire seems to have gotten what he wanted. Not only did Winnick's company win a $400 million Pentagon contract with the help of the Clinton White House, but he managed to get a public endorsement from the president himself. "Gary Winnick has been a friend of mine for some time now and I'm quite thrilled by the success that Global Crossing has had," then-President Clinton told a Calif., fund-raiser in Nov. 1999. On Thursday the Washington Times reported that Global Crossing and its CEO "have been major political donors - bigger than Enron - with a majority of those funds going to Democrats." In 1999, after McAuliffe arranged a golfing meeting between Winnick and Clinton, the businessman donated $1 million to Clinton's presidential library. That same year, McAullife cashed in his Global Crossing stock for an astonishing $18,000,000 profit. Winnick's company went belly up on Monday, wiping out investors and costing thousands of employees their jobs.