Wesley Clark sought presidency as lobbyist for Acxiom

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:02:28 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Anne Krauss

Thought this may be of interest - Wesley Clark was a lobbyist paid by 
Acxiom while he was a commentator for CNN and even continuing for a while 
after he officially became a candidate for president. Apparently, Acxiom 
paid Clark as part of its efforts to secure CAPPS II funds.

Acxiom, based in Arkansas, is one of the country's largest data-aggregation 
companies. You may recall Acxiom as the company from which government 
contractor, Torch Concepts, purchased information regarding incomes, 
occupations, vehicle ownership information, number of children and Social 
Security numbers which was used in the infamous government funded study 
which came to light last September. This was the study that utilized 5 
million pieces of Jet Blue passenger itinerary information and was entitled 
"Homeland Security -- Airline Passenger Risk Assessment."

Related link:
http://www.bop2004.org/bop2004/candidate.aspx?cid=12&act=bio

Excerpt
...Clark has been lobbying for the firm since January 2, 2002; Acxiom has 
paid more than $830,000 for Clark to advance its agenda and meet with 
government officials. Clark also serves on the company's board of directors.

According to federal disclosure records, Clark lobbied directly on 
"information transfers, airline security and homeland security issues," for 
Acxiom, which sought funding to do controversial informational background 
checks on passengers for airlines...

Clark lobbied the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, 
and the Department of Transportation for the company. Clark also reported, 
on his lobbyist disclosure forms, that he promoted Acxiom to the Senate and 
the executive office of the president. According an Arkansas 
Democrat-Gazette report, he even met personally with Vice President Richard 
Cheney.

He also made a pitch for the kind of tracking that the company's wares can 
perform while acting as a commentator on CNN...


Anne Krauss

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