In the spring of 2004, Robert Blackwill, then the influential Iraq director on the National Security Council staff, pushed hard to make Ayad Allawi, a tough, secular Shiite with close ties to the CIA, the interim prime minister of Iraq. Blackwill's efforts worked. For the next 10 months, until Allawi's party lost in the Iraqi elections, he was the first prime minister of the newly sovereign nation - America's man in Baghdad. Now, a little more than three years later, Blackwill is back in the same business: pushing hard to make Allawi prime minister of Iraq again. But this time, Blackwill's powerful lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, is receiving $300,000 over six months from Allawi for Blackwill's work. In the nearly three years since he left the White House, Blackwill has built a thriving business lobbying for the foreign governments, officials and companies he knew as President George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser, as the U.S. ambassador to India and as a veteran of decades in government. India, which has paid Barbour Griffith & Rogers $1.24 million since Blackwill began lobbying for the country in late 2005, has hired Blackwill, among others, to push for a nuclear deal between the United States and India that has run into resistance in Congress and the Indian Parliament. On April 2, Justice Department filings show, Blackwill met on the issue of U.S.-India relations with R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs and the administration's point man on the nuclear deal. Blackwill's firm has also had lobbying contracts, now expired, with the secular National Dialogue Party of Lebanon; the Confederation of Indian Industry; Dubai International Capital, the private equity firm of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Muhammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum; and Eritrea, the nation in the Horn of Africa that the State Department has been threatening to designate a terrorist state for its support of Islamist rebels in Somalia. Robert Blackwill served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, Ambasssador to India, and as a Deputy National Security Advisor to Condoleezza Rice.
Blackwill aims to put Allawi back in the Iraqi prime minister's seat
Lobbyist aims to put Allawi back in the Iraqi prime minister's seat
By Elisabeth Bumiller
Published: October 29, 2007
WASHINGTON: In the spring of 2004, Robert Blackwill, then the influential Iraq director on the National Security Council staff, pushed hard to make Ayad Allawi, a tough, secular Shiite with close ties to the CIA, the interim prime minister of Iraq.
Blackwill's efforts worked. For the next 10 months, until Allawi's party lost in the Iraqi elections, he was the first prime minister of the newly sovereign nation - America's man in Baghdad.
Now, a little more than three years later, Blackwill is back in the same business: pushing hard to make Allawi prime minister of Iraq again. But this time, Blackwill's powerful lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, is receiving $300,000 over six months from Allawi for Blackwill's work.
In the nearly three years since he left the White House, Blackwill has built a thriving business lobbying for the foreign governments, officials and companies he knew as President George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser, as the U.S. ambassador to India and as a veteran of decades in government.
Among his clients are India, Serbia, Taiwan, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Alfa Bank in Moscow and Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand and a billionaire communications tycoon who was ousted in a coup in 2006.
Since late 2005, lobbying disclosure reports at the Justice Department show that Blackwill helped bring in fees to Barbour Griffith & Rogers from foreign clients that total more than $11 million.
Blackwill's story is hardly an unusual one in Washington, where foreign lobbying has been good business since at least the early 20th century. Edward von Kloberg 3rd, once known in the capital as the lobbyist to dictators, represented Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania and Mobuto Sese Seko of the former Zaire. "Shame is for sissies," von Kloberg liked to say.
More recently, Turkey has spent millions of dollars on public relations and prominent lobbyists, among them Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the former House majority leader and a Democrat, and former Representative Robert Livingston of Louisiana, a Republican. But Blackwill stands out for his success and for his representation of countries and officials central to Bush's foreign policy.
"We have had a long-term relationship with the firm," Qubad Talabani, the Washington representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in an e-mail message. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which has paid Barbour Griffith & Rogers $1.4 million since Blackwill joined the firm's Kurdistan lobbying team in late 2005, is pushing for support in Washington of its oil contracts with foreign companies.
India, which has paid Barbour Griffith & Rogers $1.24 million since Blackwill began lobbying for the country in late 2005, has hired Blackwill, among others, to push for a nuclear deal between the United States and India that has run into resistance in Congress and the Indian Parliament. On April 2, Justice Department filings show, Blackwill met on the issue of U.S.-India relations with R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs and the administration's point man on the nuclear deal.
Blackwill's firm has also had lobbying contracts, now expired, with the secular National Dialogue Party of Lebanon; the Confederation of Indian Industry; Dubai International Capital, the private equity firm of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Muhammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum; and Eritrea, the nation in the Horn of Africa that the State Department has been threatening to designate a terrorist state for its support of Islamist rebels in Somalia.
Blackwill, who grew up on the Kansas plains and worked in the mid-1970s for Helmut Sonnenfeldt, the counselor to Henry Kissinger, then the secretary of state, is known within the Bush administration for his intellect and irascibility. In India, his tough management style prompted complaints from embassy staff members and a review by the State Department's inspector general.
In 2004, he was reprimanded by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after he was accused of abusive behavior toward a State Department secretary when he discovered he did not have a seat on a flight. But Blackwill, who taught for 14 years at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and has a wily, Kissinger-like ability to cut through layers of government, is also a gifted raconteur who mixes policy, politics and personality in his analysis of issues.
Although Blackwill now works out of Barbour Griffith & Rogers's luxurious Pennsylvania Avenue offices that look out toward the White House, his lobbying visits to former administration colleagues, when he often comes laden with information, are not so different from the conversations he had with them while he was in government, they say.
Blackwill might have continued to lobby in relative peace for his foreign clients had it not been for Allawi, who retained Blackwill's services on Aug. 20 and then said six days later on CNN that Barbour Griffith & Rogers had been hired "to help us advocate our views, the views of the nationalistic Iraqis, the nonsectarian Iraqis." Allawi also said his $300,000 bill with the firm was to be paid by a supporter whom he declined to name.
Allawi's contract with Barbour Griffith & Rogers was first disclosed on IraqSlogger, a Web site devoted to Iraq news. The contract, filed with the Justice Department, states that "B.G.R. will provide strategic counsel and representation for and on behalf of Dr. Ayad Allawi before the U.S. government, Congress, media and others." The contract also states that Blackwill would lead the lobbying firm's "core team of professionals" in representing Allawi.
But American officials in Baghdad take a dim view of Allawi's chances to be prime minister again because of the deep resentments he stirred up during his time in office - in 2004 he supported the American assaults on Najaf and Falluja - and his increasingly distant ties to Iraq. Allawi has homes in London and Amman where he spends much of his time. "I appreciated the opportunity to see Dr. Allawi when he was back in Iraq in August-September," Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said through a spokesman this week. "I can only wish he spent more of his time here."
White House officials insist that Blackwill's support of Allawi does not represent administration policy.
Although administration officials spent much of the summer criticizing the current Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki - in August, Bush publicly acknowledged "a certain level of frustration" with the Iraqi government's failure to unify its warring ethnic factions - the criticism has ceased. Administration officials say they see no viable alternative at this point to Maliki.
But that has not stopped Allawi, and Barbour Griffith & Rogers, from pressing his case. Shortly after the contract was signed, the lobbying firm blanketed Washington's congressional staff members and policymakers with e-mail messages on behalf of Allawi describing Maliki's government as a failure.
Kitty Bennett contributed reporting in Washington.
