McCain Aides' Foreign Work Raises Eyebrows
The GOP nominee's campaign includes lobbyists and consultants who worked for foreign clients, including one who did work for the pro-Russian faction in Ukraine's 2006 elections.
by National Journal's Peter H. Stone
To most political junkies, the name Christian Ferry doesn't mean much, even though he is John McCain's deputy campaign manager.
But Ferry -- whose boss is Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager and a longtime GOP lobbyist -- has an intriguing background in foreign consulting that happens to involve Davis.
Before joining the McCain campaign in early 2007, Ferry worked for Davis Manafort, the lobbying and consulting firm founded by Davis and Paul Manafort. Starting as a driver for Davis, Ferry worked his way up and was assigned key responsibilities for some of the firm's foreign clients. They included a political party in Montenegro and a political leader in Ukraine, both backed by wealthy businessmen and oligarchs who sought to sway the outcome of elections in 2006 in those two nations.
According to two sources familiar with the McCain campaign, Ferry spoke on several occasions of traveling in 2005 and 2006 to the two countries to provide advice on Western-style election techniques such as polling and advertising. Ferry's office at McCain campaign headquarters was adorned with newspaper clippings and other memorabilia from both overseas electoral efforts, according to the sources.
In Montenegro, Davis Manafort helped push a referendum on independence from Serbia that narrowly passed by popular vote in May 2006. In Ukraine, Ferry was part of a Davis Manafort team that advised Victor Yanukovich, the country's then-prime minister, whose pro-Russian party made gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections. (In 2004, Yanukovich lost to the U.S.-backed candidate, Victor Yushchenko, in a hotly contested presidential race.)
Sources say that Davis Manafort received multimillion-dollar fees from each country. "Ferry was on the ground in both countries and talked about it a great deal," said one source with knowledge of the McCain campaign and of the firm's electoral work in Ukraine. The source added that Ferry acted as "Rick's implementer."
These overseas efforts underscore not only how closely Ferry's career has been linked to Davis but also the extent to which the upper ranks of the McCain campaign include lobbyists and consultants who worked for foreign clients.
Both Davis and Ferry have taken leaves of absence from Davis Manafort since joining the campaign in 2006 and 2007, respectively. (The McCain campaign early this year instituted a policy requiring all full-time staff members to cease their lobbying activities and their foreign-representation work in the U.S. during the presidential contest.) Davis remains an officer of the firm.
In addition to Davis and Ferry, the McCain campaign's top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has previously lobbied for the Eastern European governments of Latvia and Macedonia, as well as for Georgia and Taiwan. McCain campaign senior adviser Charles Black's foreign clientele has included the corruption-plagued nation of Equatorial Guinea and a Moscow think tank run by Leonid Reiman, a telecommunications minister under then-Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reiman has reportedly come under scrutiny by German prosecutors probing allegations of money laundering.
Early this year, Scheunemann took a leave from the lobbying shop Orion Strategies, which he founded (and in which he has an equity stake). At about the same time, Black resigned from BKSH & Associates, the firm that he ran.
Some policy analysts contend that past dealings by Davis, Ferry, and others in the campaign raise potential conflicts for McCain. These critics cite foreign clients that advisers represented before joining the Republican's presidential campaign, and meetings that they arranged in 2006 and 2007 for the senator with figures including Italian con man Raffaello Follieri, who recently pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering, and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
"McCain has touted himself as one of the most ethical people in the Senate, but he has people around him whose lobbying and consulting efforts and receipt of monies present conflicts of interest," says Larry Wilkerson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary who was a top aide to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"When you take central advice from people who have advocated for foreign interests not necessarily congruent with American interests, it's really naive to assume that the advice you're receiving is not influenced by their previous work," Wilkerson adds.
Black and Davis declined to comment for this story. A McCain campaign spokesman also declined to comment. Paul Manafort did not return phone calls.
The potential conflict is underscored by Davis Manafort's work in Ukraine, observers say. McCain and the Bush administration were staunch backers of Yushchenko, whose party suffered losses in the 2006 elections at the hands of the pro-Russian opposition party that Davis Manafort advised.
According to The New York Times, McCain's office received a phone call in 2005 from an official with the National Security Council who complained that the firm's work was "undercutting American foreign policy in Ukraine." The McCain campaign has previously denied that such a call took place.
Ferry's involvement in Ukraine is significant because Davis has tried to distance himself from his shop's work there since he joined the campaign. A McCain spokesman told ABC News early this year that Davis wasn't involved in the Ukraine elections. Manafort reportedly led the firm's work there, but a source familiar with the effort says that Ferry "was going back and forth."
More broadly, one source familiar with the McCain-Davis relationship says that the senator has "looked the other way at Davis's firm's foreign work." He adds that Davis has put the senator in "odd and questionable circumstances."
Two instances where Davis may have involved McCain in questionable meetings occurred in 2006: one when McCain was visiting Montenegro as a part of a congressional delegation and the other earlier in the year when he was in Davos, Switzerland, as a member of another delegation.
To celebrate McCain's 70th birthday during the Montenegro trip, Davis -- who was not part of the official delegation -- escorted the senator aboard a yacht rented by Follieri, who was living in New York City where he had earned a reputation for boasting of his strong ties to the Vatican. Also aboard was Follieri's then-girlfriend, actress Anne Hathaway.
Follieri, who in September pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to money laundering and defrauding investors of more than $2 million, was being courted by Davis not only as a business prospect but also as a source of help for the McCain campaign. Two sources say that Davis touted Follieri to other campaign officials as someone who could be useful in Catholic outreach efforts, and that Davis even raised the possibility in 2006 that Follieri might be able to arrange a meeting for McCain with the pope.
"I personally think it's pretty hard for people who aren't even Americans to help with the Catholic vote," said one source familiar with the campaign.
In early 2007, three sources say, Davis and McCain dined with Follieri in New York City. The get-together took place over objections from a senior aide to the senator who "tried to dissuade McCain from going to the dinner" because of concerns about aspects of Follieri's background that had surfaced in news stories.
As for Davis's business dealings with Follieri, the New York Daily News reported this summer that Davis Manafort early last year signed a contract with Follieri relating to an investment deal.
Follieri wasn't the only controversial figure whom McCain met through Davis. The latter also had a hand in arranging a dinner in Davos in early 2006 that included the senator and Deripaska; the U.S. has denied Deripaska an entry visa because of questions about his possible links to organized crime in Russia.
The dinner, first reported in The Washington Post, took place while Davis was still working at Davis Manafort and was courting Deripaska, whose fortune has been pegged at $28 billion and who was a close ally of Putin's, as a client. It reportedly included other senators who were part of the congressional delegation visiting Davos.
Not long after, Deripaska wrote a thank-you note to Davis and Manafort in which he asked them for more information about a business deal involving a metals trading company and stated that he "would be happy to see if there is anything I can do to help."
Later that year, during the congressional delegation's trip to Montenegro, McCain attended an official dinner sponsored by the country's government that included Davis and Deripaska, who is one of Montenegro's largest employers. The meetings attracted attention because they seemed at odds with several public statements by McCain in which he sharply criticized Putin-linked oligarchs.
The McCain campaign has described both encounters with Deripaska as purely social and stressed that the senator never did any favors for the Russian. In an e-mail to The Post, Davis said that the meetings "all relate to my private business and have nothing to do with Senator John McCain."
But separating those private interests from a campaign whose slogan is "Country first" can sometimes be tricky, analysts say.
"For someone who claims to be a maverick, McCain has an awful lot of people around him who have done the bidding of foreign governments or other foreign interests," says Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.
