Allawi: Disclosing My Backers Will Mean Their DeathsNo wonder Ayad Allawi thinks he can get the Bush administration to propel him back to power in Iraq. The two men see eye to eye on the public’s right to see into their operations.
Asked by Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek to disclose who’s funding his $300,000-over-six-month lobbying effort by GOP firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, Allawi said:
“Of course not. They may be killed by the Iranians, they may be killed by the sectarian people … These are details I am not interested in answering.”
Shades of Mike McConnell’s statement that “some Americans are going to die” because of the public Congressional debate over revising FISA!
Only Allawi’s not alone. After Allawi’s comment on CNN Sunday that he’s getting funded by unnamed “supporters,” Justice Department officials told BGR that it needed to be more forthcoming about who’s paying Allawi’s legal bills. BGR tells the magazine that it intends to fully comply with its legal obligations, but that may not mean much for actual disclosure. The firm has the option of changing its listed client from Allawi to his political party, the Iraqi National Accord: “Under the law, lobbying firms are usually permitted to list foreign political parties as their clients without identifying the financial sponsors of those parties.”