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Payne Speaking at NATO Summit in 2006
Payne Speaking at NATO Summit in 2006
For other people named Stephen Payne, see Stephen Payne.

Stephen Prentiss Payne (born May 8, 1964) is an American lobbyist from Houston, Texas. He has also served as a governmental, energy, international affairs, and international business development consultant, corporate and political adviser, foreign diplomat, businessman, fundraiser, and former advisor (since June 2007) to the United States Department of Homeland Security's Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee (SBODAC),[1] in connection with which he held a U.S. security clearance.[2]

In July 2008 he attracted international attention after being secretly videotaped discussing a US$750,000.00 lobbying contract offering access to senior U.S. officials and suggesting a US$250,000.00 donation to the future presidential library of U.S. president George W. Bush.[3]

Contents

Early life

Payne is the son of Jerry and Marianne Payne, and grew up in Houston, Texas. His father was a longtime adviser of the Texas state senator J. E. "Buster" Brown.[4]

Professional activities

Payne is the president of the consulting firm Payne Consulting, which he founded in 1996;[5] president of Worldwide Strategic Partners (an international relations, international business development, and energy development firm);[6] president of Worldwide Strategic Energy[6] (a sister company to Worldwide Strategic Partners, which has a subsidiary called Caspian Alliance Inc.);[7] co-founder of Alliance & Co. (an international investment advisory and asset management firm),[6] founder and managing partner of the investment firm Envion Worldwide,[8] and Strategic Limited Partner for the global investment firm MSH Ventures.[9]

Payne's clients have included JPMorgan Chase,[10] Morgan Stanley,[6] United Space Alliance,[11] SAP Software,[11] Nextel Communications,[6] Continental Airlines,[12] Yukos Oil,[6] Boeing,[6] Lockheed Martin,[6] and Nuclear Solutions, Inc.[13][14] Payne also represented Itera, one Russia's largest independent natural gas producers.[15]

He has served as Honorary Consul General for the Republic of Latvia for the Texas region (with headquarters in Houston) since 1999,[9][16] and has served as an adviser to Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga on political and economic issues.[5][17] In 2004, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia awarded Payne Latvia's highest state honor, the Order of the Three Stars, for his work in helping Latvia become a NATO member.[18] For the 2006 NATO Summit in Riga, Latvia, Payne was appointed by NATO to lead a think tank conference panel discussion on energy security and chair a NATO Future Leaders Forum bringing together up-and-coming leaders from 35 NATO member and partner countries.[19] He has also served on the board of directors of the U.S.-Baltic Foundation, which promotes free markets in the Baltic States.[20]

In a promotional brochure for Worldwide Strategic Partners, he claims to have arranged an official meeting between the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and U.S. president George W. Bush in April 2006, something the Azerbaijani president had been attempting for three years.[12] In addition, after Sept 11, 2001, according to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, Payne played a pivotal in U.S. Pakistan relations, serving as a lobbyist with a group called Team Eagle (also known as Team Barakat).[11][21]

He also assisted in having the Uzbek politician Muhammad Salih's name removed from the U.S.'s terrorist watchlist.[12]

Payne also assisted Turkmenistan in assembling a consortium of nations and international firms to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.[22] Payne coordinated a trilateral summit between the Presidents of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan that produced a memorandum of understanding regarding the Turkmen/Afghan natural gas pipeline, restoring the project's viability after years of dormancy at the hands of the Taliban.[23]

He has also lobbied on behalf of the governments of Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates,[11] and performed consulting in Iraq, which he has visited twice.[11] He has also served on the board of the National Defense University Foundation.[9]

The lobbyist Randy Scheunemann has collaborated with Payne's firms since 2002,[24][25] and Payne has also partnered in his various business ventures with Frank Carlucci, Michael S. Han, Ying Wang, and W. Dieter Zander.[8]

Political activities

He is a member of the Republican Party and has been active in various Republican causes since the late 1980s. During the 1988 presidential campaign, he served as the travel aide to George W. Bush. He was a member of the staff of Kay Bailey Hutchison from 1993 to 1996.[5] In the 1996 presidential election he worked on the Dole-Kemp campaign.[4] He assisted with the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, the Senate campaign of Pete Coors for Senate, the Restore America PAC, the Rudolph Giuliani Presidential Committee, and the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee. He has also served as a Dubya Ranch Hand (2003),[26] and was a Bush Ranger in 2004 and a Bush Pioneer in 2000 and 2004.[10][27]

According to a promotional brochure for Worldwide Strategic Partners, Payne served as a "senior presidential advance representative" to George W. Bush, traveling with him to Jordan for the Red Sea Summit in June 2003. The brochure also states that Payne traveled with Dick Cheney to the Middle East in 2002 and 2005, to South Korea in 2004, to Kazakhstan in 2006, and to Afghanistan for the inauguration of Hamid Karzai in December 2004.[28] Payne was a part of a small team of Bush operatives, which included former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, which assisted the 2000 campaign in coordinating the three presidential debates.[29]

In 2001, Payne served as Senior Advisor to the NASA Administrator on White House and Congressional Affairs.[11]

According to Federal Election Commission records, since 1998 Payne has contributed more than $249,000 to Republican candidates and Republican Party committees.[30]

Scandal

Payne discussing access to senior U.S. officials
Payne discussing access to senior U.S. officials

In July 2008 Payne was caught on videotape discussing a US$750,000.00 lobbying contract and offering access to senior U.S. officials (including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Joe Biden) to the exiled Kazakhstani politician Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov (known as Eric Dos for short),[31] and suggesting a US$250,000 donation to the future George W. Bush Presidential Library.[3]

In the conversation, which was secretly taped by The Sunday Times at a meeting in the restaurant of The Lanesborough hotel in London, Dosmukhamedov claimed that the former Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev wished to meet with the U.S. officials. Payne has claimed that he did nothing wrong, and stated that he was there to recruit a new lobbying client and that it was Dos who first raised the issue of a donation.[32][33] The Sunday Times has released only 4 minutes and 31 seconds of the hour-long meeting and Payne claims that the unreleased portion of the video would show that his comments were taken out of context and would dispel The Sunday Times version of the meeting.[34] Payne was asked to resign from the SBODAC directly following the July 13, 2008 publication of the article.[35][36] U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, on behalf of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a letter to Payne one day later, on July 14, 2008, requesting further details and background about this incident.[37][38] Waxman asked Payne to respond by July 23, 2008.[38]

References

  1. ^ name=times1>Foggo, Daniel; Steven Swinford (July 20, 2008). "President Bush lobbyist Stephen Payne in ‘bribes’ row quits", The Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-21. 
  2. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-07-21-1503479250_x.htm
  3. ^ a b Foggo, Daniel (July 13, 2008). "President George W Bush lobbyist in ‘cash for access’ row", The Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-21. 
  4. ^ a b Get It in Writing, page 1 - News - Houston Press - Houston Press
  5. ^ a b c Stephen Payne NNDB
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Stephen P. Payne Alliance & Co.
  7. ^ http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3403983
  8. ^ a b Stephen P. Payne Envion Worldwide
  9. ^ a b c Stephen P. Payne MSH Ventures
  10. ^ a b Stephen P. Payne Texans for Public Justice
  11. ^ a b c d e f Partners - Stephen P. Payne Worldwide Strategic Partners
  12. ^ a b c WSP Corporate Profile Worldwide Strategic Partners
  13. ^ Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (July 17, 2007). "Nuclear Solutions, Inc. Retains Worldwide Strategic Partners, Inc. -- Augments Green Fuel Project Development Team". Press release. Retrieved on 2008-07-24.
  14. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  15. ^ http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/articles/p/80/article/684/
  16. ^ Consular Corps Greater Houston Partnership
  17. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  18. ^ http://www.am.gov.lv/en/news/Newsletters/CurrentLatvia/2004/November/582/
  19. ^ chair a NATO Future Leaders Forum
  20. ^ Board of Directors The U.S.-Baltic Foundation
  21. ^ Tilghman, Andrew (July 15, 2008). "Stephen Payne Worked For Pakistan After Sept. 11", TPM Mudracker. Retrieved on 2008-07-24. 
  22. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  23. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  24. ^ http://www.wtop.com/?sid=1407525&nid=213
  25. ^ http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3403983
  26. ^ http://www.nndb.com/people/358/000119001/
  27. ^ Bush-Cheney '04 Fundraising Democracy in Action
  28. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  29. ^ http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2008-07/wsp-partners.htm
  30. ^ Mason, Julie; Bennett Roth (July 14, 2008). "Houstonian denies he tried to sell access to Bush aides", Houston Chronicle. Retrieved on 2008-07-24. 
  31. ^ Foggo, Daniel; Steven Swinford (July 13, 2008). "Stephen Payne: a hotshot lobbyist who can get you into White House", The Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-24. 
  32. ^ http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5887988.html
  33. ^ http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/13/Payne%20emails.pdf
  34. ^ http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/071508dnmetbushlibrary.40945d7.html
  35. ^ http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/15/payne-quits-dhs/
  36. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4364429.ece
  37. ^ "Waxman Questions Lobbyist Alleged to Have Traded Access for Presidential Library Funds", Fox News (July 15, 2008). Retrieved on 2008-07-24. 
  38. ^ a b Letter from Henry Waxman to Stephen Payne U.S. House of Representatives -- Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

External links

See also
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