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A top consultant to Senator John McCain is married to a lobbyist who has worked in recent years for the Libyan regime of Muammar Khaddafi, UltimateJohnMcCain.com has learned. She began working for the Khaddafi government at a time when it was officially designated by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. Under Khaddafi's rule, the Libyan government supported terrorism in countries as far afield as Spain, the U.K., and the Philippines, and was responsible for the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. The Lockerbie bombing was considered the largest terrorist attack on Americans prior to 9/11. The McCain consultant, Mike Hudome, is one of the media advisors who took over for Mark McKinnon when McKinnon left the campaign rather than work against Obama. Mr. Hudome previously worked with McCain media advisor Michael Murphy in the 2000 primary campaign. He is married to Randa Fahmy Hudome, a former associate deputy energy secretary in the Bush administration. In October 2004, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported that she "just this month signed a $1.4 million contract to represent the Libyan government." According to Isikoff, Mrs. Hudome said "I don't see any conflict" between her lobbying for Libya and her efforts at the time to line up Arab-American support for President Bush's reelection. "I can give you a list of 101 foreign agents who play active roles on plenty of campaigns. There are plenty of lobbyists who do political work, as well. . . . I don't see a problem with this." According to Reuters, her contract called on her to "strengthen Libya's interests" by working "directly with the executive and legislative branches of government." The initial amount in the contact was reported by Reuters to be $1.47 million, and a revised contract in March 2005 was reported to be worth $750,000 for the year. Business Week reported Mrs. Hudome's first-year pay as $375,000, while $120,000 went to a Democrat, former Clinton National Security Council communications director Jill A. Schuker, whose firm Mrs. Hudome hired. A few months before Mrs. Hudome became affiliated with the Libyan dictatorship, in April 2004, President Bush suspended sanctions against Libya when it agreed to dismantle its Weapons of Mass Destruction program. Prior to the suspension of sanctions, it would have been illegal in the United States to lobby for Libya. Business Week reported that, prior to Mrs. Hudome's contract with Libya, "Former Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Greenberg Traurig, Jack Abramoff's former firm, vied for the work. The country opted for operatives with low profiles but deep connections in Washington's Arab circles." In 2005, Mrs. Hudome was dropped, one year into a two-year membership, from the top advisory board to the energy secretary. At the time, an Energy Department spokesperson would not say whether her connection to Libya played a role in the dismissal, but Reuters reported that Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary, was "not pleased to learn" of the Libya contract. Also in 2005, the Bush administration did not renew her one-year appointment to the State Department's advisor committee on international economic policy. In 2006, the State Department rescinded its designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism. In an interview on a Washington, D.C.-area cable channel, posted on YouTube last year, she spoke about the changed relationship between the U.S. and the Libyan government, proclaiming that Libya is "open for business":
Mrs. Hudome's Web site, as of May 28, 2008, states that her firm, Fahmy Hudome International, "has represented a number of foreign governments and entities, including the Government of Libya. After two years of persistent and effective advocacy for Libya, FHI achieved a great success in May of 2006, when the U.S. Department of State removed Libya from its list of countries sponsoring terrorism. This was a historic foreign policy achievement, as Libya was the first and only country ever to have been removed from the U.S. terrorist list through diplomatic means. FHI is also credited with the normalization of relations between the United States and Libya. FHI is now focusing on the next phase of U.S.-Libya relations by representing U.S. companies who wish to do business there." The connection between the Libyan regime and the lobbyist Randa Fahmy Hudome, and between Mrs. Hudome and her husband, McCain consultant Mike Hudome, is of significance in part because Senator McCain has made an issue of his efforts to limit lobbyists' influence. His campaign Web site states, that "He has fought the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided." McCain moved recently to purge his paid staff of active lobbyists - ironically, highlighting the issue to the advantage of his critics. In The New York Times, Adam Nagourney wrote that "McCain's associates said the campaign had failed to anticipate the extent to which the news media would use the [no-active-lobbyists] policy to examine McCain's staff. The result was a run of damaging stories and resignations that highlighted not the policy itself but the backgrounds of top campaign officials." (For two views of McCain's and Barack Obama's relationships with lobbyists, see the liberal Los Angeles Times and the neoconservative Commentary.) Seven years ago, as an official in the Bush administration, Randa Fahmy Hudome noted that people make sacrifices in order to serve. "When you work for the president you make some sacrifices, but I am happy to do it," she told Insight magazine. She added: "It's my time to give back." NOTE: Mike and Randa Fahmy Hudome were reported as married in the 2001 article in Insight magazine referenced above. At least as recently as 2005, they appear to have shared an address; Mrs. Hudome used that address in a 2007 filing. Regarding the current relationship of the Hudomes, UJM left messages with the respective offices of Mike and Randa Fahmy Hudome, and with the McCain for President committee. At presstime, those messages had not been returned.
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